There are times when a work of art just makes you marvel at the wonder of the human mind and feel like as a species, we're meant for more than grinding out 9-5's and just surviving. Right? If someone among us can do this, what kind of creativity is out there that we aren't tapping. Everyone has things that hit them like that, I think. For me this was one of those things, as dramatic as that sounds. It just seems impossible. I get that some find it overrated, and that it's not for everyone--but I feel sorry for anyone who can't enjoy this, even if I understand it I still wish that you could.
I find it hard to fathom the natural talent, raw creativity, lyrical wit, and pure willpower it would have taken to write and arrange something like this over the 7 years that Lin-Manuel Miranda put into it. It's not just great hooks, important topics, a good story, and powerful themes either. The way themes, lyrics, and bits of music thread through the whole play from beginning to end and tie it all together is brilliant. Hearing him talk about writing like, the Cabinet rap battles on the A Train in NYC or Dear Theodosia on his honeymoon...it's enough to make anyone feel like an underachiever.
For some reason for me his interpretation of Washington's mindset when he stepped down instead of running again, it's really powerful. It was an incredibly important precedent to set, and the foundation of a lot of the faith we have had in our political system (as cynical as we all are about it--and the play embraces that too--it is almost 250 years we've gotten out of a couple painstakingly written pieces of paper, and that's interesting on its own), so including it as a major point makes sense. But not everyone would have thought of that or intuitively seen it's importance as a theme, contrasting it with the King for both laughs and poignancy.
Lots more to say but this is getting long enough.
For anyone who doesn't know, he also wrote most of the original music for Moana. On top of that (and this next part will be for a niche audience here) he's writing all the original music for the tv/film adaptation of the "Name of The Wind" novel--a critically acclaimed epic fantasy framed in a way where a washed up fellow in hiding tells the story of his own rise and fall as a storied, nearly legendary bard and wizard. Kind of a cynical and meta but still epic take on the classic hero's journey, considered to be one of the few books in a usually maligned genre (fantasy) that lives up to the prose of "real literature". Needless to say writing songs and lute music that lives up to that kind of in-universe legend is a tough task. But what a guy to get to make the attempt.