Razzle Dazzle

There is something almost predatory in how this number opens — a showman's declaration, all brass and percussion and the theatrical conviction of a man who has practiced every gesture until it looks effortless. "Razzle Dazzle" is Chicago's most nakedly cynical song, and it wears that cynicism as sequins, making its argument about manipulation and spectacle so joyfully that the audience becomes complicit in exactly what the song is describing. The tempo is a brisk vaudeville march, the orchestration deliberately over-the-top in a way that signals its own awareness of being over-the-top, and Billy Flynn's voice — slick and commanding — delivers the whole performance with the confidence of a man who has never once worried whether the performance was enough. The song understands that jazz-era American entertainment and American justice operated by the same rules: whoever controlled the spectacle controlled the verdict. There's a double layer of theatrical self-awareness at work — a musical about performance, within a performance, celebrating performance. The choreography and music are inseparable in how this piece functions; the sound practically demands physical motion, practically demands a crowd. It's carnivalesque in the precise sense, the world briefly inverted so that artifice becomes more real than reality. This is music for the moments when you recognize the machinery behind something grand and decide to enjoy the show anyway, fully knowing the trick.