the tiktok musical that everyone forgot 

Hey dude! Love your content! Thanks for taking such care in creating such an in depth video on our little show. I try to never comment on things like this, BUT since you asked a few times... here is the outline of "Utopia" we were working off of hahah Utopia is the story of Kaia, a teenage girl who longs to see what lies beyond the walls of Anbrathian, a mega-city built in what was formally the United States, and the last place on Earth that can sustain human life. Anbrathian was established in 74 BNW (Before Nuclear War), or 2950 AD as an experiment to see if humans could build a self-sustaining city to be used as a prototype for other planets. A dome was built to surround the city to completely cut it off from the rest of human civilization and the experiment began. Then, 74 years later, the rest of the world engaged in Nuclear war and all was lost except for Anbrathian, as the dome was built to withstand harsh conditions, including Nuclear War. When the aftermath of the attacks finally settled, Anbrathian set out a reconnaissance mission to see who survived; they found no one, leaving Anbrathian as the only human life left in the universe. It is now 124 ANW (After Nuclear War) and Kaia is about to be assigned one of the 4 roles - Watcher, Giver, Advocate, Thinker. She is given one of the most exclusive and important roles, a Watcher - the world has turned into a nightmarish place and the Watchers protect Anbrathian from the outside world and guard the dome. Kaia knows she must do her duty, but also has a longing that something must lie beyond the walls and beyond the dome. Eventually, she is on night watch and sees something moving close to the dome. She should call for help, but she’s drawn to whatever is on the other side. She is never allowed to open the gates, only the 4 High Watchers at the same time have the power - well, 4 High Watchers OR someone of royal blood. (Her Grandmother rules the city.) She goes against all of her instincts and opens the gate, and exits the dome, finally seeing what she has always longed for. Not until she is through the gates does she see that the world is not a burnt, ashy horror scene, it is in fact a beautiful and tranquil place. And the thing she saw through the dome was a handsome young man named Jarek. They chat, and while Kaia has always longed to see beyond the dome, Jarek, has always longed to see what was within. It’s forbidden to get close, but he couldn’t help himself he had to know what was hiding within the dome. Throughout the rest of the novel, they continue to meet in secret as they try to discover why Anbrathian was really made, and uncover the truth that lies within the dome, eventually freeing the people from Anbrathian and allowing everyone to go… beyond the dome.

The out of context "you might have girlbossed too close to the sun" was so shocking it felt like a gunshot

no matter how hard this was workshopped, it was never gonna be Kevin Chamberlin singing Anyone Can Cook

The joke about a Wicked spin-off from the perspective of "the little girl who kills" Nessa was actually pretty funny

okay but what did he do for paige??? steal her lyrics? ok landon

Although this is a very small detail, I want to point out that the line "come on brain think of things" in the Tick Tick Boom inspired song is a reference to a Vine made by Lin Manuel Miranda.

Six the musical is also a great example of a short musical that is fantastic, it’s only like 45 minutes long

the premise of this musical kinda feels like be more chill but without all of the be more chill. if that makes sense

Between Ratatouille and For You, Page, it seems that Danny K Bernstein prefers music making over storytelling. That’s 100% valid but a musical needs a healthy mix of both. He should probably look into finding a writing partner because the book is just dragging the music down with it.

“Also known for being in the American Psycho musical” The WHAT?

I imagine the live version of this musical just being some guy standing on stage while playing the musical on his phone

I just realized, this musical is kinda TikTok propaganda, isn’t it? Like, it couldn’t end with the utopia musical failing like you suggested because that would make it seem like TikTok ISNT a meritocracy where all the hard working creative people get what they’ve hoped for. When, yknow, it isn’t in real life, but TikTok’s not gonna say that. I’m really curious now how much input TikTok as the commissioner had into what the script would be about.

Nothing can match my astonishment when my gamer boyfriend came across the tiktok musical playing LIVE (I didn't have the app myself) and I proceeded to watch it in disbelief for 45 minutes. Yes I'm a theatre nerd. Overall surreal experience

Ok so im pretty sure that “Utopia” is just the divergent series under a different name. The factions, cut off from the world, a dystopian city, etc

The “good soup” reference made me want to crawl into a ball and retreat…tHIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE A TIK TOK MUSICAL.

Thanks for shouting out Morbin' Time! We had a great time putting that show together.

His name is Landon and her name is Paige. Landon. Paige. Landing Page?! This must have been done on purpose.

Until the end of the video, I thought the "Utopia" novel in question was Thomas Moores 16th century novel, Utopia. I kind of just accepted that they were really nerdy history kids.

i’m so jealous of you and your march of the falsettos vinyl

32:16 “come on brain think of things come on brain be so smart” is a direct reference to a Vine made by none other than Lin-Manuel Miranda 😂

Reminds me more of Divergent than Hunger Games honestly. A supposedly perfect society, factions with silly names, a city "inside the fence" rather than in a dome, a generic love interest, drab black faux military gear, I'm sure the list goes on if I could actually look at the lyrics

Sorry but even after watching countless videos I can’t get over the crux of the main song of the Ratatouille musical calling him “Remy the Ratatouille” even though it’s SO wrong. It’s not the focus of this video and the composer guy himself is truly impressive but that lyric still bugs me 😂💀

It's interesting that I LIVE on musical theatre tiktok and have literally never heard of this musical until now. The Ratatoille Musical was literally everywhere, but For You, Paige was no where...

Loved the video, very informative! The weirdest part of this musical for me is the ending. I wish they would've gone for a full powder keg. Like Landon can't finish a good song in time so they drop him and get someone in the industry, but the idea stops trending and loses steam so the plans are dropped all together. Then him and Paige write the musical anyway and put it one for their high school. Then you could have a message about how creating art is valuable even if it doesn't reach an enormous audience. Just a thought

He definitely should have let this cook a little longer. If he was trying to chase the success of the Ratatouille musical, he was screwed from the beginning because i feel people immediately stopped talking about it the moment it dropped.

In most theatre productions, you need 1 month of rehearsals, most of that is spent with leads to get their lines and solos comfortable before adding in ensemble pieces, choreography, and blocking. The last week leading up to performance is Tech week and that's when stage pieces, lights, and mics are added. For the actress to be peaking hard on her mic during the song at 27:53 definitely is a mic issue. Meaning they probably did not rehearse this song at full during tech week while she was miced. So the audio engineer didn't expect to bring her gain down when she belted like that, causing the off sound of her voice. Another thing that could contribute to this is her voice being so loud that the audio quality drops on whatever device they used to record and mix with everything else for the final cut.

I feel like there was a relatively easy fix to the ballad, which would be to have it recorded and posted in-universe. Much later in the show (probably around the time the venue is booked by Landon’s agent), Paige posts a rant, not expecting it to go viral (which could be a parallel to how Landon’s Utopia song goes viral). It may be difficult to bridge the gap between the backlash Landon would likely get and the happy ending, but as an audience member I would probably suspend my disbelief if I saw Landon reconcile with Paige and Paige posting an update that she’s now working on the show.

This is totally one of those 'We came up with the title and wrote the plot around that' cases.

First Hamilton then Ratatouille now this beautiful masterpiece

Ok. "Utopia" and the whole "the dome" thing is like.. LITERALLY the book The Giver... A world thats destroyed minus a dome where the government is controlling everyones daily lives and what they believe/feel, where the main character is a special person who is chosen to learn the truth - wich they even call her a "giver", oh yeah and the factions could even be the jobs they have because those are assigned to people(Idr remember that part tho its been a while since I read it). Anyways the mc gets curious and leaves the dome and finds out its actually fine- Only thing we're missing is the mc taking a newborn baby outside the dome with her and then dying in the cold with it👍

“i’d get run over by a ford 150” i felt that in my soul

I kind of unironically love the "good soup" line. It's the only reference with any amount of subtlety

Now you have to talk about Epic: The Musical

My jaw DROPPED when I heard the horns doing the ratatouille motif

I love me a good Compound Productions video essay. I've been waiting for someone to make a video about For You, Paige!!! (And Daniel is an amazingly wonderful human being, I love him to death!)

This story is weaker than aron burr’s emotional state in illegal hamilton

at first when you said the name of the musical I heard "For you, Paige" and I was like 'aww thats nice, it's about a bunch of people coming together for someone else'... and then I realised Edit: welp

I haven’t finished the video yet so I am unsure if this is a point that he brings up, but what if they made Paige’s ballad a tiktok in the universe as well. This isn’t the most ground breaking idea and if the team had been given more time it could have come up. What if Paige being fed up with Liam and upset with him taking all the credit for the lyrics that she helped write makes a tiktok or a video of some sorts “exposing” him. I don’t know how in character that would be for her but it would also create more character conflict now that some of the pairs dirty laundry had been aired to the public and now people may start turning on Liam. It was a thought that crossed my mind that may have made that ballad more pivotal to the story. Can’t wait to finish the video!

The plot is pretty much the Austin and Ally pilot but with theater kids 💀

As a very visual person I simply cannot get over the vertical aspect ratio. If you need to have two people on screen at the same time you have to zoom out so much that scenes that were supposed to be personal feel so distant emotionally and literally.

Utopia *is* a show and if you wanna know more, Pyrocynical has a 7 HOUR VIDEO about it. Yes, I have watched it.

A tiktok musical I like a lot that I think is actually good is the Epic one. It’s still in the middle of being made but it seems super promising. It’s by Jorge Rivera-Herrans

my god please go over the morbius musical if you have time . i have literally never heared of this until now and i am utterly fascinated by its mere existence

okay the whole utopia bit was actually pretty funny. it sucks that they basically had to rush it because it was so topical, because I think there are some good ideas to be explored here

27:50 as a sound engineer and a vocalist, that is definitely her mic. Her voice is a little strained but it needs to be pulled away from her mouth, gained down, and compressed a bit less. Otherwise her sound is very clean tbh.

I saw the thumbnail and, I'm jewish, and went "wow, a musical about adolf hitler, thats so stupid, its like "The producers' but unironic and then realized I saw the microphones, my brain saw them as hitler staches, then filled in the word hitler on the thumbnail and came to that assumption.

“and we’ve been talking about this for god knows how long and the only remarkable thing I can remember is when the dad said ‘good soup’” 👏👏👏

Daniel mertzluft also wrote songs for the ATLA or Avatar: The Last Airbender fan made Musical. It got canceled probably because of copyright but they had really good songs. It was started by Katherine Lynn Rose when she wrote fan songs. You should check it out it’s pretty good!

I find this guy not even 1 day ago, finished watching all of his content, find his secret second channel a few hours after it is created and now he posts this when I’m out of content to watch. You are a great man Mr. Compound Productions

the references section was genuinely so painful to watch that i had to pause and walk away from my laptop for a second 😭

I have been waiting for this one! I loved the ratatouille musical review, you were so kind to it despite it's faults and I really enjoy your work. Positive yet critical in the right places, and extremely funny. Can't wait to see what you do next, keep it up and hope you're well!

Can we just have utopia the musical? Like have it be an actual musical but done in a longer time frame to fully polish it I rather watch it than for you Paige I would love that

I think a dystopian musical would be cool (I am not biased I am not biased I am not biased) I think how I personally would handle it is have the set and costumes and makeup make the world look really terrible and all the dialogue and story progressions and what not would agree with that, but the songs would be happy pop songs that totally glance over the problems of their world. But as the musical progresses, the main character's songs gradually become less poppy and also more genuine, as the characters around her continue to belt fun pop songs at her while she's spiraling into ballad territory. I think she should die in the end idk I want an unhappy ending

I love in seeing in real time Daniel having to explain to Andy Cohen what a for you page is lol

I am ashamed to admit that I instantly got all the (mostly outdated) tiktok trend references the show made you highlighted in this

Seeing Bertram in a chef’s hat and clipping back to you made my brain think I was looking at PJ Dunkin. And I feel like that needs to be shared.✨🤣✨

surprised that you both made jokes about the references and about lin manuel miranda getting into everything but missed that "come on brain think of things come on brain be so smart" at 32:19 is a reference to a LMM vine (so there are references to non tiktok things too i guess)

Max can talk to me about Musical related content all day! Keep the brilliant vids coming 😊

very good video! (i am just staring at your falsettos vinyl)

okay okay this dome city sure does give major Divergent vibes

Idk how much you read comments on your vids but you should talk about Epic the other tiktok musical that isn’t fully on stage but they released a whole soundtrack to it. I think it’s a cool juxtaposition from this musical that has super contemporary & therefore easily dated by a musical about Greek mythology that took a long time to come together

This give be more chill vibes. A nerdy high schooler who only has one close friend does something that sky rockets their popularity when they get popular they leave their best friend but after a while they realize there’s a problem and only there old best friend can help and it all ends with a theater production where they become friends again

THANK YOU HOLY SHIT. i fr thought this was a musical i dreamt and then i forgot about it after i deleted tiktok 😭 ALSO I SEE THE FALSETTOS VINYL !!! please make a video on falsettos it would be so good :( i love the way you explain things and falsettos is my favorite musical. i’d love to hear your take on it !

I legit thought you said his name was Blandon 😂 also I'm heartbroken that you lied about the Cars musical

absolutely obsessed with this flash in the pan failure who thought this was a good idea

saw the falsettos logo and got scared you were going to diss the love of my life

Good soup.

The illegal Hamilton video was amazing! Keep this coming!

every time i watch a video of yours i just learn that your music taste OWNS

Ok but I love your falsettos thing in the background, it’s like one of my fav musical and I thought I was the only one who knew about it 😭

wild experience listening to this at work and getting jumpscared by the full name of a guy you went to high school with 😂 rj was such a cool dude I’m glad to hear he’s doing well for himself! I was a good friend of his sister in middle school and he deserves the recognition for his talent. I’m not a tiktoker so this is the first I’ve heard about other people knowing of him! crazy stuff!

this musical is so weird bc the story sounds like a rejected episode of victorious

i knew i’d love this when i saw March of the Falsettos

I think you need to talk about the epic musical

the welleman bit would have been just a bit less painful had they at least changed the lyrics to something relevant to the scene. "soon may the bell ring us out" or some shit like that idk

Am I the only on that was just staring at the Ringo Starr poster the entire time😅

Don't know if I would call it a Tik Tok musical (not sure how we're defining that exactly?), but a musical that is being created on and helped in part by tik tok (and I am really really loving) is Epic the musical, which is a retelling of the Odyssey and is really really good. The creator is still working on it, but there are 17 completed songs already out (the musical is broke down into different 'sagas' with the Troy, Cyclops, Ocean, and Circe sagas already being out) with 5 more (the underworld saga) coming April 26, and there's clips of parts of songs from the rest of the musical out there too, though those parts are still undergoing edits and revisions. You can search up a compilation of all the completed songs and clips here on youtube very easily, and there are a number of animators who have made wonderful animatics for it. Highly recommend checking it out if you're interested!

holy shit I remember seeing one of the first tiktoks about this musical after the ratatouille musical happened. I’m pretty sure I was maybe a little intrigued, but I was mostly annoyed because it felt like a clear cash grab?? like it was just coasting on the success of ratatouille. and then I completelyyyy forgot about it until this video. god also the name “for you, paige” made me want to destroy my phone. the internet was a mistake

at 19:04 ITS LITERALLY ONCE ON THIS ISLAND WHY DID THEY DO THIE MUSICAL SO BADD ITS SO GOOD WHYYYYYYYY 😭

25:47 I'm pretty sure our guy just blanked on his line for a minute there, thats what that looked like.

It kind of feels like they read the book Utopia and then they wanted to make a musical about Utopia, and then they decided to make a musical about the idea of making the Utopia musical and I kind of wish they’d just… made the Utopia musical?

im new to ur channel, and i saw the March of the Falsettos cover! u seem very fun and involved in the musical theater community. im excited to be a new subscriber!!

I LOVE YOUR MARCH OF FALSETTOS VYNL I WANT IT

the 'in my head' song that joe and andrew sang on that new album daniel made might be one of my favorite songs right now, and i had no idea daniel was behind that!!

The falsettos album is the background >>> Great video!

Utopia feels a lot like a walmart brand cousin of the Divergent series

There actually is another Tic Tok musical called epic the musical based on the odyssey

Daniel mertzluff is an amazing guy. I go to JTF every year and one time we got to work with him to perform a song from dot and the kangaroo, a musical he wrote the musical for. Nicest guy I’ve ever met with great songwriting skills

I was literally watching part one today! I can’t believe part two is here!

The title is a cute pun but if you come up to me and say “have you seen the Ratatouille musical?” I’d know what you meant even with no context- it’s a musical, about Ratatouille, and if I don’t know what you mean specifically I know what it IS. If you came up to me and said “have you seen For You, Paige” or even “have you seen the For You, Paige musical?” I’m gonna either think you’re asking me if I’ve looked at MY for you page or I’m just gonna have a mashed up mess of TikTok on stage in my head.

I love it when you post. Always so fun to watch.

I would love for you to cover the Bridgerton musical!

The only TikTok musicals I’d heard of before this were the Bridgerton Musical and the (I think still being made?) Epic (Homer’s Odyssey) Musical

I love how you make these videos, they're so fun to watch!!! also is that a March of the Falsettos VINYL!!! so sick

turned on my notifications bell when i realized i already followed you!! love this vid

you should do a video on starkid as a concept and their company because i feel like they’re very unique that it’s a production company with a fanbase lol

He’s posting consistently and it makes me so hyped

The good soup line kinda hits tho bc of the actor

she get beyond my dome till i reach utopia

No idea how I ended staying up all night watching your videos but I appreciate the consistent TMBG representation. Didn’t sleep though.