Brief synopsis: Kind-of-but-not-really based on the life of P.T. Barnum, The Greatest Showman is a feet-stomping musical about a man with a chip on his shoulder as large as an elephant. Orphaned at a young age and surviving on the streets by stealing bread (hey, kind of like another Hugh Jackman musical character we know...), Barnum’s only solace is writing letters to his childhood crush, Charity. One musical montage later (“A Millon Dreams”) Barnum and Charity are married and have two daughters. Struggling to provide for his family, Barnum has a brilliant idea for a new business enterprise: a sideshow featuring social pariahs like the Bearded Lady, a short man named Tom Thumb,  the world’s fattest man, the tattooed lady, and the Wheeler sibling trapeze act (“Come Alive”). Against the odds and snobbish critics, Barnum’s circus becomes popular. But as his fame grows, so does his ego, and Barnum enlists the endorsements of celebrities such as playwright Phillip Carlyle (“The Other Side”) and European singer Jenny Lind (“Never Enough”) to stick it to high society... not realizing he’s becoming one of the snobs he so hates. Can he turn his life around in time to fix his mistake? (Of course he can! It’s a musical! And not like the Sweeney Todd murder the town kind of musical.)

A small part of me (okay, a big part of me) feels like I’m caving into the soundtrack’s massive popularity and the sheer incredulity that it even exists. There’s not much cohesion to the songs — it’s more like a Now That’s What I Call Music collection than an actual album — because you can almost tell that Atlantic Records had The Greatest Showman: Reimagined album in mind when Benj Pasek & Justin Paul composed the movie soundtrack. (The titular song “The Greatest Show” has too many similar-sounding Panic! At The Disco “whoa-ohs” for it to be a coincidence.) I cannot deny, though, that The Greatest Showman soundtrack is cocaine for your ears. I finally stopped thinking of Zac Efron as that kid from High School Musical thanks to “Rewrite the Stars”… I become a very aggressive dancer every time I listen to “This is Me”… I’m starting to refer to the Upside Down in Stranger Things as the Other Side — it’s actually a serious problem. I sorted my iTunes most played and had a heart attack when it said I’ve listened to “A Million Dreams” over 50 times in the past three months.

There’s just something about the music that defies logic. I’ve probably listened to the entirety of The Greatest Showman twice as many times as any other musical, but it still hasn’t grown old on me. (I am actually terrified for that day when all the shine of a thousand spotlights will be enough and listening to this soundtrack is no longer where I want to be. It’s a dangerous tightrope I’m walking here.) Honestly, instead of Maroon 5 at the Super Bowl this past year, they should have just hired the cast of The Greatest Showman because it definitely has the firepower to fill a whole stadium.