Here’s a treat for Smash fans: exclusive video of George Salazar singing “The Goodbye Song” from Hit List!

Joe Iconis and George Salazar, the composer and breakout star of Be More Chill, have been performing in a series of rock concerts at 54 Below called “Two-Player Game,” and have now released an album of those performances with the same title. The album has a fun mix of songs from Joe Iconis’s and George Salazar’s career – past, present, and even future.

Joe Iconis is now known first and foremost for Be More Chill, the musical adaptation of a YA novel that became a cult classic through social media and parlayed that into an upcoming NYC production. But fans may remember him fondly for contributing songs to the second season of Smash. Smash, for the uninitiated, was a show about the making of Broadway musicals, and was the epitome of a glorious trainwreck. In the second and final season, there was a rival musical called Hit List, and many of the songs for that were written by Joe Iconis.

Among those songs is “The Goodbye Song,” the finale to Hit List. While we can’t tell you what on earth Hit List was about, Iconis’s songs were catchy, and this is a really fun way to revisit them. Watch the video below of George Salazar (Be More Chill, The Lightning Thief Musical) singing the song, and take a minute to reflect how much better Season 2 of Smash would have been with more George Salazar in it!

In our opinion, this is a vast improvement over the Smash rendition of the song. In the show, it was somewhat chaotic, with Jeremy Jordan accompanied by an entire ensemble crooning good-byes, as Katherine McPhee wandered through dramatic lighting. Between the frenetic dancing and trying to figure out what anyone was actually singing about, it was more confusing than emotional. Stripped of all that stuff, as a solo piece, the song packs much more of a punch.

Much of the credit must go to George Salazar, among whose many talents is an ability to infuse a song with epic emotion. There’s a reason that “Michael in the Bathroom” is the standout hit of Be More Chill’s uniformly excellent score: the fact that Salazar puts the listener through the emotional wringer in the space of a few minutes.

And a year after The Lightning Thief Musical, this writer still skips “Tree on the Hill” on the cast album because it causes unseemly crying on the subway every single time. It’s no wonder that Salazar’s rendition of “The Goodbye Song” builds to quite an emotional wallop in six minutes.

“Two-Player Game” is now available both digitally and on CDs in stores. And any fans that find themselves in New York City between July 26th and September 23rd will have an opportunity to see George Salazar reprise his role in Be More Chill at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

Does this video make you miss Smash all over again? And how desperately do you want Hit List and Bombshell to finally play Broadway? They’d definitely be better than most of the stuff that’s opening these days, so we say book them a Broadway theater ASAP!