Tightrope

Michelle Williams's "Tightrope" is the film's most emotionally honest song — a small, aching ballad delivered with minimal arrangement that contrasts deliberately with the surrounding spectacle. Williams is not a trained vocalist, and the song is written to accommodate that: gentle melodic movement, conversational phrasing, a production so spare it almost disappears. The emotional effect is considerable precisely because of that restraint. Lyrically Charity Barnum is describing the vertigo of loving someone whose ambition perpetually exceeds their gratitude — a marriage performed on a wire above what it could fall into. The song sits outside the film's self-congratulatory energy, which makes it the most truthful moment in a movie about performance. Best in the early morning when you're quietly taking stock of what you're sustaining and why.