A Million Dreams

Written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul for The Greatest Showman soundtrack, "A Million Dreams" is sung by the young P. T. Barnum (Ziv Zaifman) to his future wife Charity Hallett (Michelle Williams). He tells her of his dreams for the future and explains his confidence that if they work hard for it, they will come true. Every night I lie in bed The brightest colors fill my head A million dreams are keeping me awake I think of what the world could be A vision of the one I see A million dreams is all it's gonna take A million dreams for the world we're gonna make

Later on in the song the adult Barnum (Hugh Jackman) recounts the same dreams. Justin Pau explained to Genius: "We wanted to show a couple of things. One, that this flame of a dreamer that is Barnum always has a vision. He always wanted life to be larger and colorful than it was. We wanted to show that's the kind of thing that ran through the character from when he was a kid to being an adult. But for the story, we thought it would also be interesting and ironic that he expresses this dream as a kid and when we meet Hugh Jackman as an adult now. He still has that same dream and he still hasn't found that thing. He still hasn't built the house, so to speak. He hasn't been good on the promise he makes to himself and Charity. So that dream is kept alive."

This was the first tune that Pasek and Paul wrote for The Greatest Showman and it served as their audition for The Greatest Showman. However, nothing was assured. "Every song in the movie we wrote in a competitive way, because we were never hired as the songwriters for the movie," Pasek told Billboard. "We had to submit a song for each song moment."