"Don't Forget Me" is an original song introduced in the fifteenth episode of the first season of the musical TV series "Smash", entitled "Bombshell". It was written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, but in the show's universe, it was written by the songwriting team of Tom Levitt (Christian Borle) and Julia Houston (Debra Messing) for their Marilyn Monroe musical Bombshell.

In the episode, the song is sung by Karen Cartwright (Katharine McPhee) as Marilyn Monroe during a Boston preview for the musical after having just taken over the role from Rebecca Duvall (Uma Thurman), who has been felled by illness.

The song is reprised by Ivy Lynn (Megan Hilty) in the twelfth episode of Season 2, "Opening Night", as part of the performance of Bombshell's opening night on Broadway opening, with Ivy playing the lead of Marilyn.

The song was initially released as a single from iTunes and Amazon.com's MP3 store and is currently available on the cast album Bombshell.

The song is about Marilyn Monroe's legacy, how she will inspire people, and make the world a better place through her tragic 'cautionary tale'. It has a tempo of quarter = 138 and is described as "Moderately flowing". The song ranges from F#3 to Eb5. It starts off in the key of E Major, but has a key change after the first chorus to F Major and another at the end of the bridge to G-flat Major.

Within the context of the series, the song is written by the songwriting duo as a finale song in under 3 hours after a reprise of Let Me Be Your Star in a suicide scene was deemed too depressing as the final number. After all the drama that went on beforehand, "Karen walks out onstage [after managing to memorize the song in record time] and brings down the house with 'Don’t Forget Me'. As the song ends, "we see Ivy back in the dressing room with a bottle of pills". Chris Rovzar of Vanity Fair suggests the following, "we don’t hear the final response from the Bombshell audience, but the way they reacted during the key change in “Don’t Forget Me” suggests they were poised to give a standing ovation". The song ends with the camera spinning in a circle around Karen as she "triumphant[ly] flail[s]...her arm[s in the air]".

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Wikipedia