I wonder how many people who see RENT understand how cool and complex Larson’s play on words in the title song really is? After all, RENT is not just a word for a lease payment. The word is also the past participle of the verb “to rend,” meaning to rip, shred, tear apart.

And in the final verse of the song, right after the bridge, we have these lyrics:

How do you leave the past behind
When it keeps finding ways to get to your heart?
It reaches way down deep and tears you inside out
‘Til you’re TORN APART — RENT!

And as if to reinforce the double-entendere, the last line of the song describing the sorry state of affairs against which all the cast members are rebelling:

‘Cause everything is RENT!

It’s all in shreds — the past, the establishment, all of it.
Everything but the future.
Genius, that.