{"id":209790,"date":"2019-04-13T05:30:16","date_gmt":"2019-04-13T09:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=209790"},"modified":"2019-04-13T05:30:16","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T09:30:16","slug":"ben-platt-moves-away-from-dear-evan-hansen-with-new-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/04\/13\/ben-platt-moves-away-from-dear-evan-hansen-with-new-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Platt moves away from &#8216;Dear Evan Hansen&#8217; with new album"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_209793\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-209793\" style=\"width: 988px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/D3uCH_1W4AAiaBX.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-209793\" src=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/D3uCH_1W4AAiaBX.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"988\" height=\"1200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/D3uCH_1W4AAiaBX.jpg 988w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/D3uCH_1W4AAiaBX-247x300.jpg 247w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/D3uCH_1W4AAiaBX-768x933.jpg 768w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/D3uCH_1W4AAiaBX-843x1024.jpg 843w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/D3uCH_1W4AAiaBX-16x20.jpg 16w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 988px) 100vw, 988px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-209793\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Platt says the songs are more about emotions than specifics, so there&#8217;s no need to give any former boyfriends a heads-up. (File <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BenSPLATT\/status\/1115628410871664641\">Photo<\/a>: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BenSPLATT\/\">@BenSPLATT\/Twitter<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>NEW YORK \u2013 Much of Ben Platt&#8217;s debut album \u201cSing to Me Instead\u201d is inspired by past loves, but he laughs at the notion that he could be pulling a Taylor Swift.<\/p>\n<p>Platt says the songs are more about emotions than specifics, so there&#8217;s no need to give any former boyfriends a heads-up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn&#8217;t feel the need to give any warnings,\u201d he said recently. \u201cThankfully there&#8217;s nothing too harmful said about anyone &#8230; I&#8217;m sure if these people ever did find out that I had written about them, I&#8217;m sure they would agree the emotional experience was what I put across.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He does say there was something cathartic about looking back through the lens of music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI always sort of laughed when Taylor Swift talks about relationships, and she can only move on when she&#8217;s put it into a song, but there&#8217;s a real truth to that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The album doesn&#8217;t just put his exes in the rearview mirror, it also puts distance between Platt and his Tony Award-winning role in \u201cDear Evan Hansen.\u201d Little on the album is reminiscent of the songs from the hit Broadway musical; instead, the \u201cSing to Me Instead\u201d is a more soulful project.<\/p>\n<p>It was important to Platt, that his first album as an artist take him on a different path from the music he performed in his acting roles (He played the nerdy Benji in \u201cPitch Perfect\u201d and its sequel).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI definitely wanted to make sure it was stylistically and sort of musically what I liked the most and what I love to sing,\u201d said Platt, citing James Taylor, Carole King and Donny Hathaway as examples.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone coming to see the star when his concert kicks off in May and expecting to get a dose of \u201cDear Evan Hansen\u201d take note: Platt won&#8217;t be singing any of that show&#8217;s songs on his tour.<\/p>\n<p>But he hasn&#8217;t completely left that character behind.<\/p>\n<p>Universal Pictures \u2013 and Platt&#8217;s producer dad Marc Platt \u2013 have secured the film rights to \u201cDear Evan Hansen\u201d and he hasn&#8217;t ruled out reprising the role on the big screen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know it&#8217;s in development and being written. Of course, that would be a wonderful thing I would love to be a part of,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In the interim, his next acting role is a much darker character than those he&#8217;s been most identified with.<\/p>\n<p>Platt stars in the upcoming Netflix series \u201cThe Politician\u201d from Ryan Murphy, playing a wealthy, morally challenged teen seeking to win an election to secure his spot at Harvard. Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Lange and Zoey Deutch also star.<\/p>\n<p>Platt said Murphy sought him out for the role after seeing him in \u201cDear Evan Hansen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe said, &#8216;You were this open book, this sweet, empathetic, very easy to root for (character). And I would like you to now play someone who is conniving and sociopathic and has a lot of hubris and is kind of a brat. I want to challenge you to just turn completely on its head,\u201d&#8217; Platt recalls. \u201cI was like, &#8216;What more could you ask for as an actor?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK \u2013 Much of Ben Platt&#8217;s debut album \u201cSing to Me Instead\u201d is inspired by past loves, but he &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":209793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","mauthors-alicia-rancilio","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209790"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209794,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209790\/revisions\/209794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}