One Day More (from Les Misérables)

One of the great Act I enders of all time, no question. But… are the things sung about all really happening “One Day More”? The answer may surprise you! Host writer/composer David Rackoff picks apart the music, lyrics, and storytelling that make “One Day More” so freakin' awesome.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Nothing Like Broadway podcast.
I am writer-composer David Rakov, writer-composer of the upcoming Off-Broadway musical Nothing
Like Broadway, which is not the same as this podcast, but if you like this podcast, you
might like the musical Nothing Like Broadway.
So check us out at Nothing Like Broadway on Instagram.
And if you have any questions or suggestions for songs, email us, nothinglikebroadwayatgmail.com.
And so the reason that I think I'm a good person to do this show, where each week we
take a song from musical theater and we pick it apart and look at how the music and the
lyrics and the context and the storytelling all work together, is that I write music,
lyrics and book.
And for the upcoming Off-Broadway musical Nothing Like Broadway, I've written the music,
lyrics and book.
And so I think I have like a good perspective on how the different pieces of this often collaborative
art form of musical theater works.
And so today we are going to be looking at One Day More from Les Miserables.
Let me just give you some general thoughts on Les Miserables.
First of all, I am a huge fan.
And I'm going to be a little critical today of certain aspects of the show, but know that
it is coming from a place of huge nerddom.
I have seen the show a gazillion times.
I could probably sing the entire score, start to finish right now if I needed to.
And I just think it's one of the best shows out there.
I think the biggest thing that Les Miserables does incredibly well that it doesn't get credit
for is just organizing all of this material.
So as a kid, I was a huge fan of the musical.
My family actually went to New York to see the original cast of the original production
on Broadway.
And in preparation for that, I read the novel Les Miserables, which is like a thousand pages,
and it is like sprawling and a little sloppy.
Like there's just so many, there's like history lessons and a million characters and
a ton of coincidences and just way too much material.
And so I think the thing that the musical does so well is they organize it and they're
able to like combine characters and cut subplots and just tie everything together so that it
makes sense as, you know, it was a very long show.
It was, I think it was like three and a half hours.
I think subsequent productions have shortened it a little bit, but it's still a very long
show.
But it is not a 37 hour show, which is what if you really just adapted the book, it would
have been.
And it would not have been a satisfying experience.
Les Miserables, the musical, really, really is able to give the story a structure.
And one day more is the end of Act One song that we're talking about today.
That's sort of like the zip tie that holds all the messy bundles of wire and story threads
and characters together.
That is the thing that when you're watching it helps you feel like, okay, they know what
they're doing.
I know we've met a lot of people and I know lots of things are happening, but it seems
like the people who are creating this show really have an idea of how this is all going
to work.
It's very much similar to the end of Act One of West Side Story.
Tonight, not the thing where they're singing it on the balcony, but where it's like, the
jets are going to have their way tonight.
And all the different plot threads, everybody's saying, here's what's going to happen tonight.
And you know, very much like this is one day more.
That was tonight.
It's like tonight, tomorrow.
A weekend in the country at the end of the first act of a little night music does the
same thing where it has all the different plot threads.
And it's like end of Act One, guys.
Here's all the things to look forward to.
Intermission.
And the end of Hamilton Act One does that too, where you get like a little bit of everybody's
different threads, basically, and what they're looking forward to in the future.
The producers does this.
I mean, a lot of shows do this now, but no one's done it better than one day more.
And so it's incredibly successful at that, at that organizing it and at that giving you
the feeling in the audience that you're in good hands, because all these things are about
to happen one day more tomorrow.
Like it's really immediate and intermission.
And then you just can't wait to get back from intermission.
But so one of the things that I was thinking about this in preparation for today's podcast,
I was like, how many of these things really are one day more?
And the answer is a lot of them are not.
A lot of this is just sort of like kind of shoehorning and sort of faking it into being
one day more.
Sort of like how newspaper headlines will sometimes, if they're writing a story about
something that's ongoing, they have to put it into something that's happening today.
Like, like mayor plans to increase efforts to fight crime.
Well, he's not really doing anything today, but the article in newspaper terms has to
be a headline about something that's happening right now, like residents rebuild lives after
storm damage.
That's sort of an ongoing thing, but the newspaper article is making it sound like it's happening
right now and it's immediate.
Same thing with this.
So I was like, what if I made a list of all the different characters and like, is their
thing really happening one day more?
And it was kind of funny what I was doing.
I was like, huh.
So starts with Valjean saying one day more.
His thing really isn't one day more because it's saying a never ending road to Calvary.
These men who seem to know my crime will surely come a second time.
One day more.
He doesn't even know that anyone's coming.
Surely, certainly they will come, but not one day more.
Like maybe in the future, who knows?
Right?
Like he's just kind of speculating at some point, but technically he's leaving where
he is tomorrow.
So he gets sort of a pass on that.
But he's technically leaving town with Cosette tomorrow.
One day more.
Marius and Cosette, yes, because she is leaving town and he is planning on either going in
the fight one day more tomorrow or I guess leaving with Cosette too.
So if he doesn't leave, then he and Cosette will be separated tomorrow one day more.
So that one is definitely one day more.
Eponine, no, definitely not one day more.
In fact, they switched the words around so that it's one more day, which implies that
it's ongoing.
Like one more day with him, not caring.
One more day all on my own.
So no, not one day more for Eponine.
Angelrus, yes, tomorrow is the big fight.
The townspeople, yes, tomorrow is the big fight.
The Tarnardiers, when like watch them run amuck, catch them as they fall.
No, there's nothing one day more about what they're doing.
They always have some kind of scam going on.
I mean, the authors are basically shoehorning them into this because they're fun characters
and we want to see them.
I, for one more reason, that we'll get to in a couple minutes.
But their thing really is not particularly one day more, right?
Like they're going to scam and steal and whatever, whatever is happening tomorrow.
If there's, you know, a baseball game happening tomorrow, they'll figure out a way to scam
and steal about that.
So no, their thing is not one day more.
Giver, not really.
I mean, he, because he's talking about how he's going to infiltrate the fighters, but
that's not his thing.
Giver is famously known as a character of singular focus.
His singular focus is hunting down Jean Valjean over the decades, right?
His whole little thing where he's going to like, I'm going to hide among the students
and pretend like I'm a student, which is weird because he's older and, you know, find
out the things they know.
But like that's not what he's about.
He's just, that's like a side hustle that he's doing in the meantime.
It happens to intersect with his main goal, which is finding Valjean, but that's, he
doesn't know that that's going to happen.
That is not part of his plan.
He's just like talking about a little side gig that he's got going on.
So more than half of the characters are not really one day more, but the song, very smartly
and cleverly, kind of tricks us into thinking that it's all about to happen, which is exciting
because we're about to go to intermission.
And when the show was first running, when it was, you know, three and a half hours or
whatever, the first act was like two hours and something long.
Like it's really long.
It was great.
Like I, again, saw that version of it many times, but it really sets you up, leaving you
very excited about what's going to come in act two.
So the Tarnardier thing while we're here, how they are shoehorned into the song, even
though their thing is not one day more.
One of the things that the novel, Les Misrobes has happened a lot is coincidence, which is
like not great storytelling.
Like the sort of rule of thumb is that you get one miracle.
It's called like one big coincidence per whatever you're writing a movie, play, novel.
And Les Misrobes has a lot of coincidences.
So there's a huge coincidence that happens in act two.
There's a huge plot point, which is basically where Valjean is rescuing Marius from the
barricades, going down into the sewers.
Mr. Tarnardier happens upon them.
I guess they pretend like they're dead.
And so Tarnardier steals a ring from Marius thinking he's taking a ring from a corpse.
And then much later on in the show, it's revealed that Valjean was Marius's savior that night
because the Tarnardier's have Marius's ring when they're trying to accuse Valjean of doing
something bad.
And so that's how Cosette is able to forgive Valjean and like realize that he is really
the hero, even though he didn't want to take credit for it.
And so that's only happens because of all the people in Paris, which is a big city even
back then.
Tarnardier in the sewers, which is a very unlikely place to be, happens upon what he
thinks is a dead body, which has a ring that is recognizable that he takes from Marius,
that then he shows to Cosette.
And Marius also Marius didn't know that Valjean was the one who saved him.
And so that's sort of how everything gets resolved, which is like a crazy coincidence.
But they very smartly have the Tarnardier's talking about plummaging.
You know, they're going to never know you're like, when there's a free for all, they're
going to take advantage of the dead bodies and things like that.
Not in that way.
Sorry, that sounded.
They're going to take advantage of the situation to steal things from the dead bodies and all
the fighting and the chaos.
And so by setting that up in one day more, they're kind of giving themselves a little
bit of insurance that it's going to seem okay when this happens later.
And a major plot point is resolved by this incredibly coincidental thing.
Again, one of my favorite shows, I've seen the show many times, I can sing the whole
thing right now.
The lyrics for this show are just okay, like technically speaking.
It's like an opera where like, you don't really care what the words are, it's really
about the music.
In general, sort of, they miss, the lyrics are just okay from like a rhyming standpoint.
And it's like there's a lot of cliches and a lot of things in general terms.
But they're very dramatic.
And there's a reason that teenagers are like preteens, like just fall in love with this
show, which I absolutely did when I was a preteen.
There's something about the show that speaks to a teenager.
Like everything is just so dramatic.
And like everything is in like these big sort of general terms.
And the lyrics for Les Misroblers are like that.
And the lyrics for One Day More are like that.
Like you could almost think of any Les Mis lyric as like a petulant teen and it works.
Like one more day with him not caring, I was born to be with you.
What a life I might have known.
And I swear I will be true.
I did not live until today.
How can I live when we are parted?
Like these are all things that a dramatic teenager would say, right?
But that's great.
Like you want that for a show like this.
And it's, you know, a reason that this show tends to like really draw people in when they're
preteens or teens and hold them for life.
I remember when the original Broadway cast first came out, a friend of mine's mom was
really into musicals.
And I was like, oh my gosh, you have to listen to this.
And she did.
And she was like, she was like, I really, it was really upsetting.
She's like, I really didn't enjoy it at all.
Like I really, you know, just thinking about like, like a woman who has to prostitute herself
to feed her child.
And like, she's just like, I really, if I had a kind of traumatizing, I was like, no,
like that's, I mean, like, I, you know, I get it as an adult kind of, but it's like,
no, it's just like high drama all the time.
And so there's something about the sort of teenager in us that like loves the high drama
all the time.
And one day more is all high drama for all the characters, even in some cases where they're
not at their particular moment of drama.
And all of the best and worst things about Les Mis lyrics are happening in one day more.
This is like a normal amount of rhymes.
The rhymes are fine.
Actually, okay, wait.
So I'm just looking right at the very beginning of the lyrics.
So there's like one day more, another day, another destiny, this never ending road to
Calvary, which I think they think is supposed to rhyme.
Destiny and Calvary do not rhyme like knee and re like the last syllable of those rhymes.
But that's not how you say it.
You don't say destiny and Calvary.
That would rhyme.
It's the same motif as in who am I versus who am I?
Should I condemn this man to slavery?
Pretend I do not see his agony.
Slavery and agony do not rhyme.
Again, they both end in a re and knee, but that's not a rhyme like slavery and bravery rhyme.
But anyways, it makes me crazy.
It's not the biggest sin in the world.
Lots of shows do it like the Giververs one more day to revolution.
We will nip it in the bud.
We'll be ready for these school boys.
They will wet themselves with blood.
I guess that's good in that like blood wet themselves with blood is kind of a cool sort
of twisted but completely appropriate for the character phrase.
Revolution we will nip it in the bud like setting up that though.
Having to say nip it in the bud is slightly casual thing to be saying for the same person
who's like they will with themselves with blood.
We're going to knit this in the bud.
So the lyrics are all a little bit sloppy.
Not the end of the world.
It's the music and the themes and the drama of it all that we love.
Another example of a not great lyric that's not about rhyming is the end of Eponene's
first part in One Day More.
One more day all on my own.
One more day with him not caring.
What a life I might have known.
Fine.
But he never saw me there.
What he never saw me there.
It's just you needed an extra syllable like he never saw you there is such like a weak
lyrically like it's just so vague.
It's like he never saw me there.
I guess there means in the hypothetical life with Marius.
But like that is not a great lyric.
You know but he never saw me there.
But if you're familiar with the song you also know that that is a really awesome part of
the song because of the music and the vocals.
So now let's move on to the music because this is where the gold happens in this song.
So first of all the reason that that moment but he never saw me there is really exciting.
So it's right on that I dreamed a dream thing where she like climbs up.
But Eponine doesn't climb up.
So it's right in an A natural I think which is like such a sweet spot in a lot of women's
voices because it's like a belt but it's not a super high belt but it's high enough that
it's exciting.
If you are a lady who has ever sung one day more in the car like you know that's like
your sweet spot right.
I dreamed a dream singing along with that song is hard.
So there's a pretty simple but spectacular motif that goes throughout the music of the
song underscoring the beginning and the end and throughout often and it is basically
it's the da da da da da da da da da right.
The it's just 16th notes basically outlining an A major six chord.
So just the one the three the five and then the six and it just keeps playing and it's
sort of relentless.
It's like these 16th notes that just keep things moving and makes it feel sort of hopeful
but also inevitable and sort of relentless which is just really exciting.
It is really beautiful.
And then right before the song begins it modifies doing the same basic riff but on a B minor
seven chord I think and then it gives you the A and then that's when the song starts
and it's just it's such a good beginning for a song.
I'll play that right now.
So there's some funny things about Marius in this song.
Marius is sort of like a sad boy like kind of for the whole show like he's kind of a
bummer in this song.
It basically keeps going back and forth between major when someone else is singing and then
minor when Marius starts singing.
So like when Angel Rissa is saying one more day before the storm is major and then Marius
says do I follow where she goes at the barricades of freedom.
And then when he says do I stay and do I dare like that's minor also and then it keeps
on going back to major for Angel Rissa because he's such a heroic major guy.
Even like with Eponene even when it's going back in between Marius and Eponene at the
beginning she's usually in major and he's usually in minor because even compared to
Eponene who is like the emoist but in like a really adorable engaging way Marius is just
like a bummer.
Marius and Eponene and Marius and Angel Rissa and Marius.
So anyways I think that's funny.
I don't know if anyone else thinks that.
For some reason Marius the character sort of just is like I find irritating.
And I think the show does too.
The main thing that One Day More does is it ties a whole bunch of themes together.
I went through and I picked all the ones I can.
I'm not even sure that I got them all.
I'm pretty sure I didn't get them all.
But there's like who am I which is Valjean questioning himself.
The I Dreamed a Dream theme which is what Marius and Cozzette are singing when they're
duetting which is actually really nice because Cozzette is Fantine's daughter.
That was Fantine's you know big song and now they're echoing that which is really kind
of nice.
That's Nardier is obviously Master of the House.
And then a lot of what the people are singing is do you hear the people sing because that's
the song that calls everyone to revolution and now tomorrow One Day More is when the
revolution is.
I'm sure there's a bunch more themes actually that I'm not even getting.
So there's a cool moment about a third of the way through the song.
We are in E flat and Angel Riss who's the leader of the revolutionaries is asking the
people will you take your place with me.
And then finally the people are now agreeing.
And so they're saying the time is now on a G.
The A flat day is here.
And they go from singing an A flat to a G sharp which is the same sound.
It's the same exact pitch.
But it's in a different key basically because even though the song hasn't quite moved
up into a major yet it's about to.
And so they're all on the G sharp now which is the leading tone which is the half step
below A. And it's all like it's it's leading us like basically when you hear that note
that's a half step below where the key is you really want to like go to the key.
And so but it's like not it's making us wait making us wait.
And then Valjean comes in with an A natural briefly saying one day more.
And all of a sudden now everybody gets pulled up into the new key which is A which is a
very exciting.
It's like Angel versus calling everyone guys things are going to change the key is going
to change.
And then they're like OK the key is going to change singing the same note.
But now it's in a different context because there's different chords underneath it.
And then Valjean's like yeah come along to A and everyone joins him in A which is a
very exciting moment.
And then the most exciting part of this song and arguably of the show is I guess it's
about two thirds of the way through the song.
The chorus is singing there's a new world for the winning.
There's a new world to be won.
And then they just directly quote do you hear the people sing with both the music and
the lyric of that.
Do you hear the people saying Marius makes his decision to also be one of the people
who has been convinced by Angel Rift to join the fight.
So he says my place is here.
I fight with you.
We want to go to a key change.
And then before it actually changes key you actually think there might be no music
under it.
Valjean comes in with one day more on a really high note which is the fifth of the key
that it's about to be in which is also where like bring him home is on the fifth
degree of the scale of the key that it's in.
So Valjean is basically bringing us with this very fun high note that he holds for a
long time into the new key the final key C major where the song ends up.
It's just a really exciting moment.
I will play that for you right now.
My place is here.
I fight with you.
I mean like you know how great is that like it doesn't get better than that.
And then it's basically a sort of a pile on where basically everybody starts singing
their different parts and it's called counterpoint where you have you know one melody
and then somebody else singing another melody and somebody else singing another
melody and it is just it's a little chaotic.
It's a little there's some tension just because it sort of sounds like a jumble
but it's exciting because you can pick out like I think it's a little subjective too
like you might hear Eponine's part in the middle of this.
I might hear Javer's part.
And so it's just really exciting.
And then at the end going from this chaos of counterpoint but it really is just like
a ton of stuff which just gives us the awareness that oh a ton of stuff is happening in this
show and then everybody comes together with one more dawn one more day one day more and
it ends after all this complicated counter pointy tense crazy stuff happening just like
just on a C major chord.
Like that's the last note.
It's just nothing more off the rack than a C major chord and it sounds glorious.
And it's such a great way to end the song that has been you know kind of all over the
place in an exciting way where everybody is on the same page and it's like you just can't
wait to get back from intermission.
And so it's one of the great Act 1 ending songs.
It's also one of the great Tony Award performance songs.
Like I remember as a kid seeing this on the Tony Awards like every year or two our family
went from Florida to New York to see a bunch of shows and we weren't sure like what we
were going to see as like the main show that we would buy tickets to in advance.
When this was on the Tony Awards we were all just like oh obviously this show.
And so you know like Imagine just having basically not knowing anything about it except that
it's like this incredibly long show that people in England liked.
It's based on this incredibly long book.
But then seeing one day more on the Tony Awards you're like oh my god I have to buy tickets
to this.
One more memory that I have of this song is there is a piano bar in New York in the West
Village called Marie's Crisis and it is a sing-along piano show tune bar.
And so it's like underground it's like maybe like it's pretty small it's all wood like
wood floors wood walls wood ceiling and usually walk down some stairs to get to it it's sort
of out of the way.
And the first time I went there when I first moved to New York one of the first songs that
came on or that came on that people played and everybody in there is singing along basically.
So I don't know how big it is maybe like 60 or 70 people I don't know what the capacity
is but this song came on and I was like oh I know this song and people start singing everyone
just sort of sings whatever they want to sing and sings whichever part they want to sing
and some people can sing harmony and it just sounded so good it was like the craziest thing
because like you're in this little wooden box with you know 60 people all of whom are like
at that particular moment sounded amazing and you're like in the middle of it and you're
singing along and it was just so exciting and so thrilling and it was you know pretty
new to New York and so it was just I was like holy shit like this is really awesome and
then the next time I went this song they did this song and it sounded terrible so I happened
to go on a good day for that first time but it is such a fun sing along song there's like
flash mobs people their weddings you know certainly in the car this song has probably
been heard more in the car than most other songs and it also just basically encapsulates
the entire show into this one song.
Oh and Lobster Diner there's an SNL sketch that John Mulaney wrote and then he got to
do when he hosted it which is where there's people ordering Lobster in a diner and then
it turns into One Day More and it goes on for a long time and it's very funny.
Yeah so this song is definitely permeated into pop culture so this has been the Nothing
Like Broadway podcast please follow us on Instagram at Nothing Like Broadway and you
can look us up on Facebook Nothing Like Broadway and if you were listening to this podcast
please rate it five stars and leave a review and if you have a suggestion for a song email
us Nothing Like Broadway at gmail.com I'm David Rackoff the writer-composer of the
upcoming Upcoming Off Broadway musical Nothing Like Broadway.
Let's go out listen to some of the original Broadway cast recording of One Day More from
the Ms. Rob.
Oh boy their names.
Written by Herbert Kretsmer, Alan Bubele and Claude Michel Schoenberg sorry for the
pronunciation that's the best I got and here is One Day More.
Where when hasn't spawned one more dawn one more day one day more.