#i think it's basically like. she can sing. her voice isn't bad. but post-iron maiden she insists on singing mostly haunting sea shanties

[trophywifejimgordon]

the old guard + singing

joe has the best voice. andy and nicky have the worst. i’m just gonna state that upfront as immutable fact

it’s like... he predates the renaissance by over three hundred years, but joe really is a renaissance man. What Can’t He Do. singing isn’t one of the artistic pursuits to which he dedicates the most time, but when he does sing, it’s a beautiful thing. 

everyone knows this.

he could do opera, were he so inclined.

booker easily holds second place for two centuries before nile. his voice isn’t, like, technically perfect like joe’s, but he can carry a tune and is good at belting out lyrics when he’s in a particularly good mood. it’s kind of like... he’s got a good voice for pub singing. not perfect, but comfortable and strong. you love to hear it.

nile might give him a run for his money when she shows up, though.

by sound alone, nile is better than booker. it just takes them a long time to actually figure this out, because she hasn’t sung outside of the shower in years, and before that, the most public she’d ever gone with it was church choir. she’s been complimented on her voice, but mostly by like, family and close friends. it’s just not something she ever really thinks of when she thinks about her strengths.

one night after a mission that goes particularly well, what’s left of the old guard ends up in a bar somewhere, celebrating with cheap drinks and karaoke. everyone urges nile to get up on stage, but she declines. 

so really, she brings it on herself when andy gets up in her stead

the thing about andy is that she sings like a dying cat

she KNOWS this

she does not care.

it’s especially tragic when you think about how many songs andy still remembers that no one else on the planet has heard... but the only one capable of sharing them mangles the tune so badly that you’d wish the song had stayed dead.

not to mention, can you imagine how annoying it would be to get a fragment of a song stuck in your head that’s in a language no one speaks anymore? immortality SUCKS!

finally, to put everyone else out of their misery, nile takes the stage from andy and finishes the song. and she’s really good! the others tell her so when she gets off stage, and that kind of makes nile proud because she knows by now that these people are so old. they’re polite, but they don’t bother with empty compliments. so hearing that, it kind of makes her feel special.

nicky’s somewhere between “actually good” and “andy.” he’s not the worst--his voice itself isn’t bad--but he’s tone deaf and can’t carry a tune.

unlike andy, he acknowledges this, and usually politely excuses himself from action when there are attempts to cajole him into showing off.

joe still likes his voice, though. sometimes, when it’s just the two of them, or when the group has had a few bottles of wine between them, he can be convinced to sing a few bars of some sappy italian love song from the 16th century. joe finds this incredibly endearing every time, everyone else throws things at him until he stops.

all in good fun, though. they love him.

even with his terrible, terrible voice.

nile really started singing when she was a kid because she loved watching musical movies with her mom. mostly her mom’s favorites--things like jcs, the wiz, joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat, dreamgirls, etc--but also some disney stuff, particularly princess movies. and the ‘97 cinderella.

also into musicals, surprisingly, is booker.

it started because he has been a fan of les miserables since DAY ONE (and we’re talking 1862, here) and he’s kept up with every adaptation he can get his hands on. when he learned, in the early eighties, that they were doing a musical... well.

he enjoyed it so much that curiosity necessitated he branch off into some other musicals. i think he’d like some pretty basic ones; grease, phantom, maybe little shop.

me, projecting? whaaaaaat?

les mis is his bread and butter, though. he’s got Thoughts and Opinions and makes a point of preferring the lyrics in their original french.

All This To Say...

consider: pre-betrayal, joe with his lovely voice and booker with his intense adoration of les mis getting up on a table and doing a lively rendition of the confrontation. joe is valjean, booker is javert.

we love to see it.

that’s all i’ve got for you tbh, thank you and goodnight!