Say My Name

The production here is deliberately unhinged, built on a wobbly, carnival-adjacent foundation — minor-key syncopation, a ragtime-adjacent piano line, percussion that lurches rather than drives. It is gleefully wrong in all the right ways. The character work is doing most of the heavy lifting: the performer plays the song as a seduction that is also an interrogation, cycling through charm and menace with elastic ease. The voice is controlled chaos — it knows exactly when to crack, when to croon, when to bark. Comedically it lands somewhere between an old-fashioned big-band number and a haunted funhouse, and that tonal blend is the point. Lyrically, the song is about power and naming — the insistence that being seen, being called by your name, is a form of summoning. Within the Beetlejuice universe, the name carries literal supernatural stakes, but the song translates broadly to anyone who has ever wanted to matter to someone. It belongs to a tradition of villain-adjacent showstoppers that make you root for the wrong person through sheer charisma. You reach for this when you are in a slightly feral mood — commuting, cooking, wanting to feel theatrical about something mundane.