The Last 5 Years - I Can Do Better Than That video free download

Earn Viramon

Love this

Jamison Williams

It el2z

Lindsey Austin

Omgosh I can't wait for the movie to come out!!!! I just hope it's as good as the original broadway cast!:)

xPandastic

love this song !! : 3

MusicalPonies

CATHERINEMy best friend had a little situationAt the end of our senior yearAnd like a shot, she and Mitchell got married that summerCarolann getting bigger every minuteThinking, "What am I doing here?"While Mitchell's out every nightBeing a heavy-metal drummerThey got a little cute house on a little cute streetWith a crucifix on the doorMitchell got a job at the record store in the mallJust the typical facts of a typical life in a town on the Eastern ShoreI thought about what I wantedIt wasn't like that at allMade Carolann a cute baby sweaterThinking "I can do better than that"In a year or so, I moved to the cityThinking "What have I got to lose?"Got a room, got a cat, and got twenty pounds thinnerMet a guy in a class I was taking who you might sayLooked like Tom CruiseHe wouldn't leave me alone 'less I went with him to dinnerAnd I guess he was cuteAnd I guess he was sweetANd I guess he was good in bedI gave up my life for a better part of a yearAnd so I'm starting to think that this maybe might workAnd the second it entered my headHe needed to take some time offFocus on his "career"He blew me off with a heartfelt letterI thought "I can do better than that"You don't have to get a haircuteYou don't have to change your shoesYou don't have to like Duran DuranJust love meYou don't have to put the seat downYou don't have to watch the newsYou dont' have to learn to tangoYou don't have to eat prosciuttoYou don't have to change a thingJust stay with meI want you and you and nothing but youMiles and piles of youFinally I'll have something worthwhileTo think about each morningYou and you and nothing but youNo substitution will doNothing but fresh, undiluted and pureTop of the line and totally mine!I don't need any lifetime commitmentsI don't need to get hitched tonightI don't want to throw up your walls and defensesI don't mean to put on any pressureBut I know what a thing is rightAnd I spend every day reconfiguring my senseWhen we get to my house, take a look at that townTake a look at how far I've goneI will never go backNever look back anymoureAnd it feels like my life led right to your sideAnd will keep me there from now onThink about what you wantedThink about what could beTHink about how I love youSay you'll move in with meThink of what's great about me and youThink of the bullshit we've both been throughThink of what's past because we can do better!We can do better!We can do better than that!We can do better than that!

ThespianIntheTARDIS

The movie hasn't come out yet. But, there is a version of the show onstage on YouTube- I think it's a college production? The performers are quite good.

Meraea Alejandra

Welcome to Part Twelve of my Last Five Years analysis. Today we’ll be tackling what is probably my single favorite song in the entire show, “I Can Do Better Than That”.Words can’t really describe how much I love this song, but I’m going to spew a bunch of them at you guys anyway.As we near the end of the show, two things start to happen. The first is that the emotional whiplash that characterized the beginning of the show comes back. The second is that Jason Robert Brown begins to do musical and lyrical callbacks. We’ve actually already heard a few of them. Sometimes they’re just from one song to the next, like the phrase “rolling along”, but the first one that reaches across the threshold that is “The Next Ten Minutes” is when Cathy sings “And I...” near the end of both “See I’m Smiling” and “Climbing Uphill.”Well, this song has one of the most explicit callbacks in the show. I’ll cover it in more detail because I think it’s completely brilliant, and it is probably the main reason why this song, along with “See I’m Smiling”, are my two favorite numbers in the show.But beyond that, this song is probably illustrates better than any other song just what it is about Cathy that appeals to Jamie (and by extension, the audience). Just by virtue of exposure we grow to identify with Cathy and her tragic storyline, but with the exception of “A Summer In Ohio” and the audition part of “Climbing Uphill”, we don’t get a lot of examples of how charming and fun she can be. This song absolutely showcases that.It also is, in a way, her origin story. It takes place while Cathy is driving Jamie to meet her family for the first time, so it makes sense that her childhood is on her mind. The music is bubbly and cheerful, tinged with barely contained excitement.*My best friend had a little situation at the end of our senior year**And like a shot, she and Mitchell got married that summer**Carolann getting bigger every minute, thinking, "What am I doing here?"**While Mitchell's out every night being a heavy-metal drummer*One of the joys of new coupledom is being able to share your life stories with a captive audience. I imagine that this is one of her “stories”, those anecdotes that we all have, whose presentation we’ve refined over time for maximum enjoyment by those who hear them.Also, no offense to those of you who like drumming or heavy metal, but “high school heavy-metal drummer” was chosen for maximum derpness.(I’m sorry, but I went to a music school with a bunch of people who were drummers that we like “Yeah, rock and roll! Yeah, I’m gonna be a big star in a band! What, I have to learn to read music?!” There’s a reason they are typically the low man on the musician totem pole)*They got a little cute house on a little cute street, with a crucifix on the door**Mitchell got a job at the record store in the mall*I’m thoroughly enamored of the detail about the crucifix on the door. Because having fucked up by having premarital sex *and* getting pregnant before graduating from high school, putting a crucifix on your door totally makes up for all that. I don’t know, it’s just another one of those specific details that I love.Mitchell is lucky that he was born early enough for mall record stores to still be a thing that exists, let alone something that apparently pays well enough to support a family.*Just the typical facts of a typical life in a town on the Eastern Shore**I thought about what I wanted**It wasn't like that at all**Made Carolann a cute baby sweater**Thinking "I can do better than that"*And here’s why Cathy has such a strong desire for independence. It’s probably also why she decided to go ahead and pursue her dreams of being an actress. Her best friend got thrown into a life of average, typical domesticity and ended up thoroughly settling. Cathy took a look at that and ran screaming in the other direction.Which is not to say that I think she was especially angry or disappointed with Carolann. She describes it as a “typical life”. But she decided to set her sights much higher than “typical”. Which I think is part of why Jamie calls her an “ambitious freak” in “The Schmuel Song”, because at one point in her life, she was.The strings, especially the cellos make me really happy throughout this entire song. And I can’t believe I didn’t mention this earlier, but I love that there is no drum set in this show. It really helps give the music and the show itself a much more intimate feel.I watched Anika Noni Rose perform this song and I was trying to figure out why I hated it so much, and I realized it’s because she was performing with a band that had a drum set, and I was like “Nooooooooooooooope.”*In a year or so, I moved to the city, thinking "What have I got to lose?"**Got a room, got a cat, and got twenty pounds thinner**Met a guy in a class I was taking who you might say looked like Tom Cruise**He wouldn't leave me alone unless I went with him to dinner*Tom Cruise is gross.Actually, Tom Cruise is crazy. So crazy that Jason Robert Brown actually changed the lyric (to “met a guy … with some very well-placed tattoos”) so people wouldn’t think that Cathy was thinking that the guy hitting on her looked crazy.Two things to note here. One, this was Cathy’s turn at being “young and thin”, like the girls she was so jealous of back in “Climbing Uphill”. Two, this is an example of someone other than Jamie explicitly pursuing her. I guess I bring that up because the Cathy in this song is a strong, confident person who knows what she wants and is determined to get, far removed from the insecure Cathy that we’ve seen in most of her other songs, and I feel like part of the reason for that is because this period in her life where she was more conventionally desirable is fresh in her memory.Also I really wanted to “move to the city, thinking ‘What have I got to lose?”, because I overidentify with Cathy. MOVING ON.*And I guess he was cute, and I guess he was sweet, and I guess he was good in bed**I gave up my life for a better part of a year*I love how ambivalent Cathy was about this dude, and I love that those were the three requirements for her to continue being at least vaguely interested in him. “Mostly cute, decently sweet, good enough in bed.”The fact that she gave up her life for the better part of a year is an important detail, because it establishes a pattern with her. Despite her desire to be her own person and live life on her own terms, Cathy has a tendency to “take his cues”, as she put it in “I’m A Part Of That”. In other words, she tends to build herself around the men she is with. She clearly regrets doing that in this instance, but some habits are hard to break.*And so I'm starting to think that this maybe might work, and the second it entered my head**He needed to take some time off**Focus on his "career"**He blew me off with a heartfelt letter**I thought "I can do better than that"*This song is all about Cathy realizing that she doesn’t need or want to settle. She was lucky that this guy dumped her, and she was smart enough to realize how lucky she was almost immediately afterwards.But here’s where the tragic irony of everything comes back into play, because this show loves to go there.This dude blew her off with a heartfelt letter. People with good memories (at least, those people who are watching the show and can see, y’know the actual props and sets and whatnot) will remember that in “Still Hurting”, one of the things Cathy is processing is that Jamie officially ended their marriage with, guess what?A heartfelt letter. Because he’s a writer, and of-fucking-*course* that’s how he would finally decide to say “We’re through”. Throw in the fact that his career was such a major obstacle to their relationship and the song soars to new heights of tragedy, far beyond merely being a glimpse into a joy that we already know is fleeting.The bridge, which starts in the next section, is my favorite part of the song.*You don't have to get a haircut**You don't have to change your shoes**You don't have to like Duran Duran**Just love me*This is love. For me, this is Cathy’s counterpart to Jamie’s first verse from “The Next Ten Minutes” in terms of lyrics that are an unbelievably insightful look into what real love is, and how it feels in your heart.Love is when you stop caring about the tiny little details, the little traits that so many people use to disqualify each other as romantic prospects. Cathy loves Jamie, and all she needs, all she wants in the world is for him to return her love. Any tiny little quirks or annoying habits or less-than-ideal-isms fade in the face of an honest love.Although seriously, if you don’t like Duran Duran there’s something wrong with you.*You don't have to put the seat down**You don't have to watch the news*The music here is the same as the verse just before, but in the next few lines it builds and builds, and I literally just listened to this five times in a row because I love it so much. This is musical theater writing at it’s finest, the way the music and the emotion and the lyrics flow together and song becomes the only conceivable way to express how strongly you feel something.*You don’t have to learn to tango**You don't have to eat prosciutto**You don't have to change a thing**Just stay with me*The way she hits those notes. I love it. And then Jason Robert Brown tops that in the next section.*I want you and you and nothing but you**Miles and piles of you**Finally I'll have something worthwhile**To think about each morning*“You, you, and nothing but you. Miles and piles of you.” The same exact words that Cathy spat so angrily at Jamie back in “See I’m Smiling” are repurposed here as a proclamation of how much she loves him.This is so powerful, because it illustrates how the same words, and even the same qualities of a person, can provoke completely different reactions based on their context.In this song, Jamie is like a drug that Cathy can't get enough of. She wants to soak him up into every last cranny of her mind, body and soul. In "See I'm Smiling", she's angry and terrified of the overwhelming presence that he has in her life. She feels like nothing compared to him.The same words, completely different sentiments. It's powerful, and by highlighting the comparison both musically and lyrically, Jason Robert Brown is making you think deeply about Cathy's journey over the course of the show, how much things have changed from how she was at the beginning of the show/end of the relationship, to how they are now.And then the next line. “Finally I’ll have something worthwhile to think of each morning.” The I’ll/worthwhile rhyme is great enough on its own, but even greater is how this calls back to what Cathy was saying back in “A Summer In Ohio”.“I finally got something right.”Because for all that Cathy wants an atypical life, far from the comfortable domesticity that Carolann ended up with, for all that she has ambitions and wants to succeed on her own terms, she continually downgrades the importance of her career in favor of her relationship with Jamie. Whether this is because her career never turned into much for her to live for (compared to the experience of loving Jamie) or whether the experience of real, overwhelming love (the kind expressed in her audition song, the kind where there’s no thoughts of settling for something that is “good enough”) is simply far more important to her is up for debate.I think it’s probably a little bit of both.*You and you and nothing but you**No substitution will do**Nothing but fresh, undiluted and pure**Top of the line and totally mine!*There’s that word again. “Mine”. It comes up over and over again whenever she is talking about Jamie. But unfortunately I have to wait until the next song to really get into why it’s so devastating each time I hear her say it.*I don't need any lifetime commitments, I don't need to get hitched tonight**I don't want to throw up all your walls and defenses*This is such wonderful bullshit, and I mean that sincerely. Because you know what love also is? Love is when you feel yourself wanting to rush head first into the future with someone, even though you know it’s crazy. Where it’s all you can do not to engage in forever-talk that you’re deeply afraid will scare the other person away.But at the same time, I think Cathy is doing her best to live in the now when she says this. She doesn’t need a promise of marriage. She just needs for Jamie to love her totally, with all his heart.More talk about “walls and defenses” in the next song.*I don't mean to put on any pressure, but I know when a thing is right**And I spend every day reconfiguring my senses*That last line has always confused me a little, but I think what she’s saying is that her relationship with Jamie is such a game changer that she has to approach everything about her life from a new perspective.Proving once again that for all that she says otherwise, Cathy can’t help but define herself around the relationship that she’s in.*When we get to my house, take a look at that town, take a look at how far I've gone**I will never go back, never look back anymore**And it feels like my life led right to your side, and will keep me there from now on*Cathy feels like her life is finally turning around. She hasn’t “made it” yet, but she has managed to establish a life for herself in the big city, escaping the confines of that town on the eastern shore (I think it’s explicitly stated as being in Connecticut somewhere, possibly in the plot synopsis).*Think about what you wanted**Think about what could be**Think about how I love you**Say you'll move in with me*It’s just one line, but for some reason I can fill in an *absurd* amount of backstory based entirely on the fact that Cathy is the one who asks Jamie to move in with her.Because in my mind, what that means is that at this point in time, Cathy’s life is more stable and secure than his. I realize that this might be stretching it a little, but I almost feel like Cathy might actually be older than Jamie. Like, maybe they met while he was still in college (Columbia, naturally, as stated in “Shiksa Goddess”), and he was in awe of the fact that she was living this independent life in the big city, following her dreams and ambitions on her own schedule, under her own terms, while he was struggling with school and his ability to pursue writing. And they meet, and they go on a date, and they instantly become enamored of each other, and he is so blown away by her specialness as a non-Jewish, independent woman that he suddenly starts writing like a madman. And the rest is history.One of the things I love about this song is that Cathy is strong, and confident. She knows what she wants, and she’s willing to reach out and grab it. It’s one of the few songs where she has a strong sense of agency. Everywhere else it mostly seems like she’s reacting to the situation that’s unfolding around her.*Think of what's great about me and you**Think of the bullshit we've both been through**Think of what's past because we can do better!*Cathy is connecting their lives together by use of the word “we”. She has just finished telling Jamie about all the bullshit that she’s overcome, and she implicitly refers to the bullshit he’s had to deal with, and talks about them moving past it together.By rhyming you, through, and do, Jason Robert Brown highlights the word “better”, which sits on a long, high note, the kind that is the reason I love musical theater as much as I do.Listen to the way Sherie sings that note.*We can do better!*She’s proud. Defiant. There’s a wonderful power in the way she hits that note. it’s like she’s ready to take on anything. It’s like she believes in the two of them so much that anything is possible.I don’t know. I love that note.*We can do better than that!*This is Cathy at her happiest. She’s about to march into her childhood home, head held high, the man she loves by her side, confident in the endless possibilities that are stretching out before her.*We can do better than that!*I love this number so much.

Michael Chu

Welcome to Part Twelve of my Last Five Years analysis. Today we’ll be tackling what is probably my single favorite song in the entire show, “I Can Do Better Than That”.Words can’t really describe how much I love this song, but I’m going to spew a bunch of them at you guys anyway.As we near the end of the show, two things start to happen. The first is that the emotional whiplash that characterized the beginning of the show comes back. The second is that Jason Robert Brown begins to do musical and lyrical callbacks. We’ve actually already heard a few of them. Sometimes they’re just from one song to the next, like the phrase “rolling along”, but the first one that reaches across the threshold that is “The Next Ten Minutes” is when Cathy sings “And I...” near the end of both “See I’m Smiling” and “Climbing Uphill.”Well, this song has one of the most explicit callbacks in the show. I’ll cover it in more detail because I think it’s completely brilliant, and it is probably the main reason why this song, along with “See I’m Smiling”, are my two favorite numbers in the show.But beyond that, this song is probably illustrates better than any other song just what it is about Cathy that appeals to Jamie (and by extension, the audience). Just by virtue of exposure we grow to identify with Cathy and her tragic storyline, but with the exception of “A Summer In Ohio” and the audition part of “Climbing Uphill”, we don’t get a lot of examples of how charming and fun she can be. This song absolutely showcases that.It also is, in a way, her origin story. It takes place while Cathy is driving Jamie to meet her family for the first time, so it makes sense that her childhood is on her mind. The music is bubbly and cheerful, tinged with barely contained excitement.*My best friend had a little situation at the end of our senior year**And like a shot, she and Mitchell got married that summer**Carolann getting bigger every minute, thinking, "What am I doing here?"**While Mitchell's out every night being a heavy-metal drummer*One of the joys of new coupledom is being able to share your life stories with a captive audience. I imagine that this is one of her “stories”, those anecdotes that we all have, whose presentation we’ve refined over time for maximum enjoyment by those who hear them.Also, no offense to those of you who like drumming or heavy metal, but “high school heavy-metal drummer” was chosen for maximum derpness.(I’m sorry, but I went to a music school with a bunch of people who were drummers that we like “Yeah, rock and roll! Yeah, I’m gonna be a big star in a band! What, I have to learn to read music?!” There’s a reason they are typically the low man on the musician totem pole)*They got a little cute house on a little cute street, with a crucifix on the door**Mitchell got a job at the record store in the mall*I’m thoroughly enamored of the detail about the crucifix on the door. Because having fucked up by having premarital sex *and* getting pregnant before graduating from high school, putting a crucifix on your door totally makes up for all that. I don’t know, it’s just another one of those specific details that I love.Mitchell is lucky that he was born early enough for mall record stores to still be a thing that exists, let alone something that apparently pays well enough to support a family.*Just the typical facts of a typical life in a town on the Eastern Shore**I thought about what I wanted**It wasn't like that at all**Made Carolann a cute baby sweater**Thinking "I can do better than that"*And here’s why Cathy has such a strong desire for independence. It’s probably also why she decided to go ahead and pursue her dreams of being an actress. Her best friend got thrown into a life of average, typical domesticity and ended up thoroughly settling. Cathy took a look at that and ran screaming in the other direction.Which is not to say that I think she was especially angry or disappointed with Carolann. She describes it as a “typical life”. But she decided to set her sights much higher than “typical”. Which I think is part of why Jamie calls her an “ambitious freak” in “The Schmuel Song”, because at one point in her life, she was.The strings, especially the cellos make me really happy throughout this entire song. And I can’t believe I didn’t mention this earlier, but I love that there is no drum set in this show. It really helps give the music and the show itself a much more intimate feel.I watched Anika Noni Rose perform this song and I was trying to figure out why I hated it so much, and I realized it’s because she was performing with a band that had a drum set, and I was like “Nooooooooooooooope.”*In a year or so, I moved to the city, thinking "What have I got to lose?"**Got a room, got a cat, and got twenty pounds thinner**Met a guy in a class I was taking who you might say looked like Tom Cruise**He wouldn't leave me alone unless I went with him to dinner*Tom Cruise is gross.Actually, Tom Cruise is crazy. So crazy that Jason Robert Brown actually changed the lyric (to “met a guy … with some very well-placed tattoos”) so people wouldn’t think that Cathy was thinking that the guy hitting on her looked crazy.Two things to note here. One, this was Cathy’s turn at being “young and thin”, like the girls she was so jealous of back in “Climbing Uphill”. Two, this is an example of someone other than Jamie explicitly pursuing her. I guess I bring that up because the Cathy in this song is a strong, confident person who knows what she wants and is determined to get, far removed from the insecure Cathy that we’ve seen in most of her other songs, and I feel like part of the reason for that is because this period in her life where she was more conventionally desirable is fresh in her memory.Also I really wanted to “move to the city, thinking ‘What have I got to lose?”, because I overidentify with Cathy. MOVING ON.*And I guess he was cute, and I guess he was sweet, and I guess he was good in bed**I gave up my life for a better part of a year*I love how ambivalent Cathy was about this dude, and I love that those were the three requirements for her to continue being at least vaguely interested in him. “Mostly cute, decently sweet, good enough in bed.”The fact that she gave up her life for the better part of a year is an important detail, because it establishes a pattern with her. Despite her desire to be her own person and live life on her own terms, Cathy has a tendency to “take his cues”, as she put it in “I’m A Part Of That”. In other words, she tends to build herself around the men she is with. She clearly regrets doing that in this instance, but some habits are hard to break.*And so I'm starting to think that this maybe might work, and the second it entered my head**He needed to take some time off**Focus on his "career"**He blew me off with a heartfelt letter**I thought "I can do better than that"*This song is all about Cathy realizing that she doesn’t need or want to settle. She was lucky that this guy dumped her, and she was smart enough to realize how lucky she was almost immediately afterwards.But here’s where the tragic irony of everything comes back into play, because this show loves to go there.This dude blew her off with a heartfelt letter. People with good memories (at least, those people who are watching the show and can see, y’know the actual props and sets and whatnot) will remember that in “Still Hurting”, one of the things Cathy is processing is that Jamie officially ended their marriage with, guess what?A heartfelt letter. Because he’s a writer, and of-fucking-*course* that’s how he would finally decide to say “We’re through”. Throw in the fact that his career was such a major obstacle to their relationship and the song soars to new heights of tragedy, far beyond merely being a glimpse into a joy that we already know is fleeting.The bridge, which starts in the next section, is my favorite part of the song.*You don't have to get a haircut**You don't have to change your shoes**You don't have to like Duran Duran**Just love me*This is love. For me, this is Cathy’s counterpart to Jamie’s first verse from “The Next Ten Minutes” in terms of lyrics that are an unbelievably insightful look into what real love is, and how it feels in your heart.Love is when you stop caring about the tiny little details, the little traits that so many people use to disqualify each other as romantic prospects. Cathy loves Jamie, and all she needs, all she wants in the world is for him to return her love. Any tiny little quirks or annoying habits or less-than-ideal-isms fade in the face of an honest love.Although seriously, if you don’t like Duran Duran there’s something wrong with you.*You don't have to put the seat down**You don't have to watch the news*The music here is the same as the verse just before, but in the next few lines it builds and builds, and I literally just listened to this five times in a row because I love it so much. This is musical theater writing at it’s finest, the way the music and the emotion and the lyrics flow together and song becomes the only conceivable way to express how strongly you feel something.*You don’t have to learn to tango**You don't have to eat prosciutto**You don't have to change a thing**Just stay with me*The way she hits those notes. I love it. And then Jason Robert Brown tops that in the next section.*I want you and you and nothing but you**Miles and piles of you**Finally I'll have something worthwhile**To think about each morning*“You, you, and nothing but you. Miles and piles of you.” The same exact words that Cathy spat so angrily at Jamie back in “See I’m Smiling” are repurposed here as a proclamation of how much she loves him.This is so powerful, because it illustrates how the same words, and even the same qualities of a person, can provoke completely different reactions based on their context.In this song, Jamie is like a drug that Cathy can't get enough of. She wants to soak him up into every last cranny of her mind, body and soul. In "See I'm Smiling", she's angry and terrified of the overwhelming presence that he has in her life. She feels like nothing compared to him.The same words, completely different sentiments. It's powerful, and by highlighting the comparison both musically and lyrically, Jason Robert Brown is making you think deeply about Cathy's journey over the course of the show, how much things have changed from how she was at the beginning of the show/end of the relationship, to how they are now.And then the next line. “Finally I’ll have something worthwhile to think of each morning.” The I’ll/worthwhile rhyme is great enough on its own, but even greater is how this calls back to what Cathy was saying back in “A Summer In Ohio”.“I finally got something right.”Because for all that Cathy wants an atypical life, far from the comfortable domesticity that Carolann ended up with, for all that she has ambitions and wants to succeed on her own terms, she continually downgrades the importance of her career in favor of her relationship with Jamie. Whether this is because her career never turned into much for her to live for (compared to the experience of loving Jamie) or whether the experience of real, overwhelming love (the kind expressed in her audition song, the kind where there’s no thoughts of settling for something that is “good enough”) is simply far more important to her is up for debate.I think it’s probably a little bit of both.*You and you and nothing but you**No substitution will do**Nothing but fresh, undiluted and pure**Top of the line and totally mine!*There’s that word again. “Mine”. It comes up over and over again whenever she is talking about Jamie. But unfortunately I have to wait until the next song to really get into why it’s so devastating each time I hear her say it.*I don't need any lifetime commitments, I don't need to get hitched tonight**I don't want to throw up all your walls and defenses*This is such wonderful bullshit, and I mean that sincerely. Because you know what love also is? Love is when you feel yourself wanting to rush head first into the future with someone, even though you know it’s crazy. Where it’s all you can do not to engage in forever-talk that you’re deeply afraid will scare the other person away.But at the same time, I think Cathy is doing her best to live in the now when she says this. She doesn’t need a promise of marriage. She just needs for Jamie to love her totally, with all his heart.More talk about “walls and defenses” in the next song.*I don't mean to put on any pressure, but I know when a thing is right**And I spend every day reconfiguring my senses*That last line has always confused me a little, but I think what she’s saying is that her relationship with Jamie is such a game changer that she has to approach everything about her life from a new perspective.Proving once again that for all that she says otherwise, Cathy can’t help but define herself around the relationship that she’s in.*When we get to my house, take a look at that town, take a look at how far I've gone**I will never go back, never look back anymore**And it feels like my life led right to your side, and will keep me there from now on*Cathy feels like her life is finally turning around. She hasn’t “made it” yet, but she has managed to establish a life for herself in the big city, escaping the confines of that town on the eastern shore (I think it’s explicitly stated as being in Connecticut somewhere, possibly in the plot synopsis).*Think about what you wanted**Think about what could be**Think about how I love you**Say you'll move in with me*It’s just one line, but for some reason I can fill in an *absurd* amount of backstory based entirely on the fact that Cathy is the one who asks Jamie to move in with her.Because in my mind, what that means is that at this point in time, Cathy’s life is more stable and secure than his. I realize that this might be stretching it a little, but I almost feel like Cathy might actually be older than Jamie. Like, maybe they met while he was still in college (Columbia, naturally, as stated in “Shiksa Goddess”), and he was in awe of the fact that she was living this independent life in the big city, following her dreams and ambitions on her own schedule, under her own terms, while he was struggling with school and his ability to pursue writing. And they meet, and they go on a date, and they instantly become enamored of each other, and he is so blown away by her specialness as a non-Jewish, independent woman that he suddenly starts writing like a madman. And the rest is history.One of the things I love about this song is that Cathy is strong, and confident. She knows what she wants, and she’s willing to reach out and grab it. It’s one of the few songs where she has a strong sense of agency. Everywhere else it mostly seems like she’s reacting to the situation that’s unfolding around her.*Think of what's great about me and you**Think of the bullshit we've both been through**Think of what's past because we can do better!*Cathy is connecting their lives together by use of the word “we”. She has just finished telling Jamie about all the bullshit that she’s overcome, and she implicitly refers to the bullshit he’s had to deal with, and talks about them moving past it together.By rhyming you, through, and do, Jason Robert Brown highlights the word “better”, which sits on a long, high note, the kind that is the reason I love musical theater as much as I do.Listen to the way Sherie sings that note.*We can do better!*She’s proud. Defiant. There’s a wonderful power in the way she hits that note. it’s like she’s ready to take on anything. It’s like she believes in the two of them so much that anything is possible.I don’t know. I love that note.*We can do better than that!*This is Cathy at her happiest. She’s about to march into her childhood home, head held high, the man she loves by her side, confident in the endless possibilities that are stretching out before her.*We can do better than that!*I love this number so much.

Christina DeCoppi

In a year or so, I moved to the city Thinking "What have I got to lose?" Got a room, got a cat, and got twenty pounds thinner Met a guy in a class I was taking who you might say Looked like Tom Cruise He wouldn't leave me alone 'less I went with him to dinner And I guess he was cute And I guess he was sweet ANd I guess he was good in bed I gave up my life for a better part of a year And so I'm starting to think that this maybe might work

Christina DeCoppi

While Mitchell's out every night Being a heavy-metal drummer They got a little cute house on a little cute street With a crucifix on the door Mitchell got a job at the record store in the mall Just the typical facts of a typical life in a town on the Eastern Shore I thought about what I wanted It wasn't like that at all Made Carolann a cute baby sweater Thinking "I can do better than that"

Christina DeCoppi

I Can Do Better Than That by CATHERINE My best friend had a little situation At the end of our senior year And like a shot, she and Mitchell got married that summer Carolann getting bigger every minute Thinking, "What am I doing here?"

Christina DeCoppi

He wouldn't leave me alone 'less I went with him to dinner

μόνα λίζα

this is amazing...where can i watch the movie online free??

Aquaboy60

Don't know this show. I happened to stumble across this song elsewhere, loved it and now am obsessed with this show!

Kelsey Elaine

Obsessed with this song. My vocal coach have this to me to try. I'm having so much fun with it!

trialbyhedgehog

Re-discovering The Last 5 Years after about... 5 years since I left school!!! Best day ever. Can't stop singing this!

Nicole Merrill

I am obsessed with this play. My favorite!

Maddy Janakis

I just cannot get this out of my head!

Crystal Ball Charlie

I know right, what's up with that? Great song.

Tamar Knott

6,417 views, 20 likes and no comments? haha love this song, there we go 1st comment :)

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