Obama Hits The Charts With ‘Hamilton’ Song
Former President Barack Obama recently released a list of his favorite songs of the year for 2018, per the Inquisitr, but now a song featuring the vocal stylings of the former president of the United States has landed on the Billboard charts.
“One Last Time (44 Remix)” — a remixed version of a song from the popular Broadway musical Hamilton — has debuted at No. 22 on the Billboard’s R&B songs chart, per the Hollywood Reporter. The song was released on December 22 as part of a “Hamil-drop” — as periodically released Hamilton-related songs are colloquially referred to.
The original “One Last Time” is a song in Hamilton‘s second act, one in which George Washington and Alexander Hamilton discuss Washington’s decision to step down from the presidency after two terms. The segment ends with Hamilton writing the address, speaking it out loud as Washington delivers it in song. The song is about the important moment in history when the first president “[taught] them how to say goodbye,” because “if we say goodbye / the nation learns to move on / it outlives me when I’m gone.”
Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda has said that the original “One Last Time” song was inspired by Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech from the 2008 Democratic primaries, a speech which was later set to music by a group of musicians led by Will.i.am, per YouTube. So, in the new “44 Remix,” Obama recites the closing paragraphs of Washington’s address — from 1796. On the recording he is joined by gospel legend BeBe Winans and Christopher Jackson, the latter of whom played Washington in Hamilton‘s original production.
Obama is a known fan of Hamilton, as Miranda workshopped the show at the White House, and later returned with the cast to perform at the White House years later. Obama even worked the phrase “one last time” into the announcement of his own farewell address in January of 2017, as Medium details.
This is not Obama’s first time on the Billboard charts. A 2015 remark by the then-president that “Folks want to pop off and have opinions on what they think they would do” led to a club remix by JX Cannon called “Pop Off.” That song landed on the now-defunct Billboard + Twitter Emerging Artists chart in December of that year.
Obama also has two Grammy Awards. He won the award for Best Spoken Word album in 2006 — for the audio version of his memoir Dreams From My Father — and won the same award again in 2008 for his second book, The Audacity of Hope.
Hamilton was also celebrated last week, at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington.
