The song begins during the Kickoff Assembly for The Connor Project, a student organization that the musical's protagonist, Evan Hansen had formed, with help from Jared Kleinman and Alana Beck, in order to keep the memory of a fellow student, Connor Murphy (whose suicide sets off the events in the musical) alive. Evan, at first, gives a speech on the stage of his high school's auditorium. After fumbling through his note cards mid-speech, he begins to have a panic attack and sits on the ground as his anxiety takes over. He takes a deep breath, stands up, starts over and gives a new speech, this time through song. While knowing that he has been lying all this time, his speech presents a message of hope to those in attendance. After the first chorus, it's revealed that an audience attendee videotaped the speech and put it up online. As the song builds up into an uplifting climax, it goes viral, the entire public believing and consuming Evan's lies in the process. The song returns in Act 2 as a much darker-toned reprise underscoring Alana putting Evan's note (believed to have been Connor's suicide note) online, which gets immediate backlash on social media.
