They slipped a copy of the CD to visiting campus speaker Stephen Schwartz, who, recognizing semi-raw talent, wrote back with a detailed analysis of what worked and what didn’t. While still sophomores in Michigan, with lots of time to kill between the tiny roles they were cast in in school plays, they came up with the song cycle Edges - “song cycle” being a euphemism, of course, for “unproduced musical” (Unproduced or not, Edges has lately become popular among the Pasek and Paul fan base, which now peers into the crevices of their back catalog, looking for deep cuts). They bonded over being the worst dancers in their freshman ballet class, retreated to work on a song idea instead, and thus was born a beautiful pas de deux…figuratively speaking. Hearing characters break out into song and further the story through music was very natural to me.” Much more natural, as it turns out, than acting, which they thought they’d be pursuing when they first met up at the age of 18 at the University of Michigan. It was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater. The Little Mermaid came out when we were four years old. As Benj has said, "We both credit the Disney renaissance of the late ’80s and early ’90s as one of the big reasons our generation is so primed to love musicals. Ben Pasek and Justin Paul came of age experiencing musicals first and foremost when the fairest lady was Ariel, not Eliza. There’s another great songwriting duo that comes to mind: Ashman & Menken. Lerner & Loewe, speaking of brilliantly alliterative Broadway teams, could be proud. ![]() There’s an even better reason to keep repeating those names, of course, and it’s in how much you can’t stop humming every musical phrase or going back over every sweet gut-punch of a lyric in your mind after seeing a show like Dear Evan Hansen or hearing a song score like The Greatest Showman. That pairing of names falls so pleasingly off the tongue -there’s musicality even to their bylines! - you’d root for them to become the most celebrated songwriting team of their generation even if they didn’t have the collective talent to back it up. Journalist Chris Willman sent along this appreciation of their story thus far. ![]() On the night of May 15, 2019, Benj Pasek & Justin Paul won the ASCAP Vanguard Award at our annual Screen Music Awards - the first time the Vanguard has been bestowed upon ASCAP members who primarily write for the screen or stage.
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