Friday, 18 December 2015
Andy Mientus - Hard Candy Christmas
7 DAYS TIL CHRISTMAS!!
Follow Andy on social media here (Twitter)
I do adore a bit of Andy Mientus - I've followed him from Smash to Chasing Life to his gleeful performance as a villain who comes onto The Flash. I was lucky enough to see him as Marius in Les Miserables and hope that he brings his role of Hanschen in Spring Awakening to the UK (should the show revival make it here). I'm about a year late in discovering that he sang at last year's It Gets Better holiday fundraiser - and he picked a doozy of a song that fit the theme of that campaign perfectly. Choosing to cover Dolly Parton's Hard Candy Christmas was sheer genius. It's a song about how life can get the better of you just one too many times, how the future too oft seems bleak and dismal, how just the smallest disappointment can be the straw that breaks the camel's back. But within that despair there is a shining light of hope - a glimmer of optimism that lies within all of us and just needs to be reignited by a kind word or moral boost from time to time. Andy sings with a tender aching that highlights his nuanced understanding of the lyrics - it feels incredibly personal as if he's channeling his own past experiences and singing not because it fixes the past, but because it helps him remember how he got to where he is today. And that's reason enough for us all to fall in love with his performance of this gorgeous song. The way he smiles as he sings "I'll be fine and dandy" shows that resilience of spirit - just seeing him sing those words made the woes I've had this year feel a little less terrible and gave me hope for a brighter tomorrow. And isn't that the best Christmas gift of all?
**Ghosts of Christmas past**
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