Video: Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman Unpack the Evolution of 'Let Me Be Your Star'

The music starts playing, it's the beat of her heart saying, let me be your star

I'll just have to forget the girl I used to love, forget poor Norma G

The past is what I'm rising above, the future is there on screen

I'd say we wrote almost every single song for Smash in this room

One we wrote in a bathroom in London for the finale. Yes

And moving the line, we wrote over the phone. I was in L.A. You were in L.A., right

But this is where we wrote Let Me Be Your Star. But it wasn't the first song that was written for Smash

When we got the, right? Am I right? If you say so. Okay. This song would have been written by Julia and Tom

Yes. And like every other song after that, our songs always then were half about Marilyn and her life

but half about what was happening on each episode. so that's why

there isn't a musical of Bombshell because these songs all aren't exactly

what would have been a musical that we were writing just from the get-go

it was only about Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller no, it had to serve two masters

this one worked out really well because it was about wanting to be a star

like Marilyn and also about these two girls wanting it so it actually has an intro that's only heard

on the Bombshell soundtrack which I'll sing now So the girls sang it in the bombshell concert. Right

It started at it It very very low It very low for the girls And an octave lower it really low for me but it goes something like this So another man says that he can compete that he can love a moving target

So another affair gets an incomplete, well it's time to adjust my plan

Cause when I'm up there on this silver screen I can make the whole world one Norma Jean Wow

So I can have the love of a single man But a million or more

Well that I can And then began the song as most of us know it now

But first we wrote, the first song lyric we wrote was much more Marilyn-centric, which we, 13 years later, went into the vault and found because we had the idea of starting Smash, the Broadway musical, with a kind of overwritten song that was more about Marilyn's life

Bob Greenblatt gave us a great note. He said, I love the song, guys, but could you rewrite the lyric to be less about everything about Marilyn

So he said, think of Don't Rain in My Parade, which ends the first act of Funny Girl

And except for what she says, hey, Mr. Ronstein, here I am

Nothing else in that whole entire song mentions Fanny or Nick or the Ziegfeld Follies or the 1910s or the 1920s

It's just about a woman who has a goal. So we went back and tried to make it more universal

as opposed to Marilyn said. So, I mean, it used to have like a Fading on a man all alone in the dark

Till her gaze turns his spark into fire It takes just one glance of her style and romance

To fill up his soul This girl in control Anyway that then became Fade in on a girl with a hunger for fame

And a face and a name to remember The past fades away because as of this day

Norma Jean's gone She's moving on And that's our Hey Mr. Orange D

That's it Her smile and your fantasies Play a duet That will make you forget

Where you are The music starts playing It's the beat of her heart saying

Let me be your star Take it! I'm not to sing it

He never sings. And it goes on from there, and builds and builds and builds

And so we sent all these songs to Megan and Kat. And although throughout the first two seasons

and the only two seasons of Smash, we recorded every vocal right where you're standing

that one we actually did go to recording studio right we were at the uh power station power station

was a long time ago and many songs many singers ago and we worked it out like what key would it be

in you know i i had a track created that we could change the key on the spot and i worked it out with

Megan and Kat what key work best it ended up being quite a high key because

that those last notes are like D's they're belting and what the harmonies

would be and who would be on top sometimes it Megan on top sometimes on the bottom and I just had a glorious recording session where those two girls just sang this song and you know no one wanted to jinx anything but we

could sense, oh, this really feels good. And now we have the

glorious Robin Herter, who sings the original version as written for Marilyn, and then we have the glorious

Bella Coppola, who sings the sort of standard version. Yeah. I mean, it's different in that it's a solo

now. And we had to keep that under our hats for so long because we didn't want to spoil

the moment when Brooks turns to Bella and goes, Chloe, you know she

And the audience goes, And it's so thrilling that we immediately said, well, we can't

show Bella singing the song at all. We can't put it out, which killed her

and it killed us. So we were very happy to finally get into

previews where people started to And have the cast album out with Bella singing it

The past fades away Because as of this day Norma Jean is gone

She is moving on Her song and your fantasies play a duet

That will make you forget where you are The music starts playing

It's the beat of her heart saying Let me be your star

I'll just have to forget The girl I used to love Forget poor Norma Jean

The past is what I'm rising above The future is there on screen

That's me on screen