A year after The Greatest Showman, the 2017 Michael Gracey-directed film inspired by the life of the 19th century entertainer and founder of Barnum & Bailey Circus, P.T. Barnum, hit the screens, the soundtrack to the film was still going strong.
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Hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and topping the charts in several countries, the 11-track album was still playing throughout 2018 with the award-winning “This Is Me,” “The Greatest Show,” “The Other Side,” and more, all composed by the songwriting duo of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.
Pasek & Paul
Long before they jumped into scoring The Greatest Showman, Pasek, and Paul had already composed music for the 2016 musical drama La La Land, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, and the 2015 film for the Broadway hit Dear Evan Hansen, before venturing into the story of P.T. Barnum.
The two first connected as musical theater undergrads at the University of Michigan and went on to write and produced the coming-of-age musical Edges in 2005 and composed the stage adaptation of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach as well as the off-Broadway musical Dogfight before venturing into film.
The duo also composed the music and lyrics for the stage adaptation of A Christmas Story: The Musical, along with songs for television shows The Flash and Smash.
In 2022, Paul and Pasek score the holiday film Spirited, starring Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, and Octavia Spencer.
“Never Enough”
In The Greatest Showman, the duo’s triumphant “Never Enough” is performed by Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, played by Rebecca Ferguson, who has just been promoted by Barnum, for her American debut, and reflects the characters’ desire for great success.
All the shine of a thousand spotlights
All the stars we steal from the night sky
Will never be enough
Never be enough
Towers of gold are still too little
These hands could hold the world but it’ll
Never be enough
Though Ferguson is seen singing the song in the film, “Never Enough” was actually recorded by Paul and Pasek’s regular collaborator Loren Allred for The Greatest Showman soundtrack.
“The hairs on our arms stood up when we heard Loren sing it, and we wanted to figure out how to deliver that feeling to an audience as well,” said Pasek. “Rebecca Ferguson is a wonderful actress and an accomplished singer as well, but the style of the song was really something that Loren made her own. Rebecca was totally down to lip sync and with the kind of passion that Loren’s performance resuscitated.”
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When approaching the song, Pasek and Paul wanted to make a classical music song accessible with more pop elements. “It’s sort of meant to be a pop technique, that ‘Never, never, never’—something that was hooky and that was repetitive,” said Paul of the song. “We also thought it was kind of delicious to have this character who represents P.T., who’s striving for acceptance and fame. It feels extravagant and overwhelming, and it’s sensory overload of her just harping on this.”
He continued, “‘Never, never, never enough.’ It felt like you could imagine someone in a castle trying to count all of their riches and it still doesn’t add up to enough. It’s that kind of that moment where somebody isn’t really satisfied.”
Golden Globes and Grammys
The Greatest Showman song “This Is Me” won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song—Motion Picture and picked up an Oscar nod for Best Original Song, along with winning a Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media.
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Kelly Clarkson
In 2018, Kelly Clarkson performed “the song”Never Enough’ for The Greatest Showman: Reimagined album. At first, Clarkson recorded three versions and narrowed it down to something in between rock and classical.
“The first round was more classic, then we tried to do a more rocked-up version to see if we could beat it, and we ended up with a vocal that was somewhere in between,” said Clarkson. “I tried to walk the line of keeping it classic and being a bit adventurous with however I was feeling while recording it so that the end product would be the reimagined version. It’s a beast of a song!”
Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images for The Royal Commission for AlUla
