Breakdown: Ireland from Legally Blonde The Musical

If you’re here, you probably know of my love of the Broadway musical Legally Blonde. What you probably might not know of is my favorite song in that musical. Now. As a whole that musical has some bangers and a pretty exhilarating jump rope scene.

Note: How did the ensemble jump rope and sing at the same time? Amazing. I’m still waiting for a Broadway revival.

But the one song I’ve currently got stuck in my mind is the “I Want” song. There is literally a genre of songs in musicals called the “I Want” song. If I name them, you can probably recognize them. In Hamilton, it’s “My Shot.” In Encanto it’s when Mirabel sings “Waiting On A Miracle.” For the title character in Legally Blonde, the sorority president who follows her former boyfriend to Harvard Law School to convince him to marry her, it’s “What You Want.” You can’t get much on the nose than that.

The definition of the “I Want” song is to lay out what the character wants and usually signals the start of them taking action to reach their goal.

Strangely enough, my favorite “I Want” song in Legally Blonde the Musical doesn’t follow that path. It’s sung by Paulette, the hairdresser Elle befriends in Cambridge. Paulette sings an entire song about her dreams and hopes which is wrapped up in a romanticized view of Ireland.

The trick is that this character doesn’t think that she can get what she wants. This is in direct opposite of Elle. When Elle she got dumped, she made it her goal to get her guy back. Paulette, though, has given up hope and sings about fairy tale endings being for other women, women not like her.

It's a beautiful song, made for a skilled character actress because it goes from comedic to heartbreaking. When I first heard it, I knew the character was going to get everything she wished for in that song because, well, that’s how stories work. Plus, it has a reprise and any story that has a reprise needs to attention paid to it.

Paulette’s I Want song being a foil for Elle is also how she’s positioned in the show. They were both dumped by worthless men. They both love dogs. They both prize beauty and are skilled at their jobs.

Though it isn’t said in the musical that Paulette is good at her job, I can’t imagine Elle settling for subpar work when it comes to her hair, especially when her being knowledgeable about hair care is a plot point. Plus, if Elle was a real mean girl, a caricature of a spoiled, silly California sorority girl, there’s no way she would be friends with Paulette or try to help her reach the dreams that Paulette thought were out of reach. It’s the center of a story that is truly about sisterhood and friendship.

In the end, Paulette encourages Elle to go after her goals no matter how other people might those goals find silly. And Elle does the same for Paulette.

Here’s a link to the performance of the song if you’d like to take a listen: