The Broadway musical Rent features the recurring song “Seasons of Love.”
Jonathan Larson wrote the music, lyrics, and book for Rent, which follows a group of artists and friends living in New York City’s East Village. “Seasons of Love” asks how a year should be measured and uses the figure of 525,600 minutes as its central idea.
The song appears several times in the musical, serving as a thematic refrain about friendship, loss, love, and the value of human life. It is performed by the ensemble rather than belonging to only one character.
Rent began previews at the Nederlander Theatre in January 1996 and officially opened on April 29, 1996. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Larson died shortly before the musical’s first preview.