Ginger mentioned that they'd seen someone on the tube with a programme for Death Note: The Musical, and I couldn't resist checking out the songs on YouTube.

Somehow, I forgot that this would inevitably reignite my enormous and misplaced fondness for Light Yagami, absolutely classic bad decisions teenager. I just can't resist watching a fictional teen screw everything up!

Here are my two favourite songs on the soundtrack, both Light solos:

'Where Is the Justice?': Light's 'I Want' song before the plot actually kicks off. If you're familiar with Death Note, you'll be unsurprised to learn that what he wants is basically for all the criminals to fucking die. This kid is wildly intense and wildly misguided and I love him.

'Hurricane': Light going 'holy shit, this murder book actually works, TIME TO BECOME A GOD.'

My first thought when I learnt a Death Note musical existed was 'I hope Light and L have an intense duet of their internal monologues while playing tennis,' and I am delighted to report that Light and L do, in fact, have an intense duet of their internal monologues while playing tennis ('Playing His Game').

I went downstairs to have lunch with my housemates after listening to the musical soundtrack, and Ginger commented on the fact that I was smiling fondly. I had to explain that I was just thinking wistfully about how murderous Light Yagami is. He's the worst! (I just caught myself smiling fondly again while typing that. ♥)


I thought musical Light sounded familiar, so I looked up the singer, Jeremy Jordan. He played Varian in Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, the Tangled animated series!

I don't think I've mentioned Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure here before, but I've seen about half of it and it's delightful. Rapunzel/Eugene remains my favourite Disney pairing of all time. They're both so genuinely fond of each other and it's really cute.

Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure also contains absolute banger 'Ready As I'll Ever Be', which I have listened to an unreasonable number of times, so it's no wonder Light sounded familiar to me. (Varian is even singing about going to extreme lengths to serve justice!)

The characters in the Tangled series burst into song only occasionally, so it's always slightly disconcerting when it happens. Great! But disconcerting. If your characters sing in every episode, great, it's a musical show. If your characters sing maybe once in every ten episodes, it's harder to suspend your disbelief; it feels like they're actually breaking into a spontaneous musical number and then going about their lives like it never happened.