This program is mostly about songs from Disney animated feature films spanning over 80 years, from Snow White (1937), through Encanto (2021). We also present songs ranging from the megahit Let It Go from Frozen to pieces from the more obscure parts of the Disney canon, and a few that are simply “Disney-adjacent.” Enjoy!
When You Wish Upon a Star
In early 1940, Disney issued the second of its animated feature film, Pinocchio, following well over two years of production work. When You Wish Upon A Star was written as a feature for one of the star voices in the cast, Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards, by the songwriting team of Leigh Harline and Ned Washington. Edwards voiced Jiminy Cricket, the narrator of the film, and Pinocchio’s conscience. This sweet tune won Best Song at the Academy Awards that year and its first seven pitches have become a kind of musical signature for Disney Studios.
Cruella DeVil
Every Disney film have to have a villain, and Cruella DeVil– of One Hundred and One Dalmations i(1961) s certainly among the nastiest of the lot. The story focuses on songwriter Roger Radcliff and his wife Anita, and their Dalmatian dogs, Pongo and Perdita. Perdita is pregnant with a litter of puppies, and Cruella, a school acquaintance of Anita’s, shows up demanding to buy them when they are born...never hinting that she wants to turn them into a fur coat! Roger improvises the slinky Cruella DeVil in the next room after Anita shoos him away. Dalmatians is Disney’s first movie that is not structured as a “musical”, but veteran songwriter Mel Leven wrote the hilariously sarcastic lyrics and unforgettably oozy tune.
It’s a Small World (After All)
In 1964, Walt Disney oversaw the construction of a pavilion/ride for United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) the New York World’s Fair. It’s a Small World, in a celebration of world peace, and proved to be one of most popular attractions at the fair: visitors floated through a magical landscape peopled by hundreds of animatronic and other figures representing children from around the world. In 1966 the ride assembled at Disneyland in California, and five years later, it was replicated as part of Florida’s Walt Disney World. The song, It’s a Small World (After All), sung in many languages, by three inch tall children, was written by brothers and movie songwriters Richard and Robert Sherman. [Warning: If you ever take the ride, It’s a Small World (After All) constitutes a pernicious earworm will be with you for the rest of the day!]
Candle on the Water
Pete’s Dragon is a live action/animated feature film from 1978, telling the story of a young orphan boy in Maine, Pete and Elliot, an enormous clumsy green dragon who is invisible to the townspeople, and who causes all sorts of mayhem. Nora, the daughter of the lighthouse keeper, who befriends Pete, was played by pop star Helen Reddy. Al Kasha and Pete Hirschhorn wrote the lush love song, Candle on the Water, for Nora to sing from the top of the lighthouse to her fiancé Paul, who is lost at sea and presumed dead.
Rainbow Connection
Puppeteer Jim Henson created the iconic Muppets in the 1950’s, and they became popular on television in appearances in variety shows and ads. Of Course, the Muppets became almost universally popular as part of Sesame Street (beginning in 1969) and in successful variety show The Muppet Show (1976-1981). In 1979, Henson produced The Muppet Movie, a kind of combination road movie/origin story. It opens with Kermit the Frog, alone with his banjo in a swamp in Florida, singing the wistful The Rainbow Connection. With Encouragement from a talent scout, Kermit sets off for Hollywood, picking up the rest of the Muppets gang along the way. The Rainbow Connection earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Song that year, for Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher.
A Whole New World
When Disney produced Aladdin, Disney turned to composer Alan Menken, who had already scored previous hits The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991). Aladdin, adapted from the medieval Arabic collection The Thousand and One Nights, was dominated by a manic performance by the late Robin Williams as the Genie. A Whole New World, by Menken and lyricist Tim Rice, is a sweeping love duet for Aladdin and Princess Jasmine, sung on a nighttime flight on Aladdin’s magic carpet.
Kokomo
Like the Muppets, the next song, Kokomo by the Beach Boys is best classed as “Disney-adjacent.” This laid-back “yacht rock” song from 1988, that appeared in the truly awful Tom Cruise movie Cocktail (produced by a Disney subsidiary.) It marked The Beach Boys’ first return to the pop charts in 20 years and was the group's final top 40 hit. This song, featuring The Beach Boys’ trademark close vocal harmony, is about a fictitious Caribbean beach. It was written by John Phillips (of The Mamas & The Papas), Scott McKenzie, Terry Melcher and Beach Boy Mike Love.
Circle of Life
In 1994, Disney issued The Lion King, a story set among the wildlife of southern Africa. It is a grand opening coming-of-age story featuring the young lion Simba. The anthemic Circle of Life heard at the beginning and end of the movie, was written by pop superstar Elton John and composer Hans Zimmer with lyrics by Tim Rice. This song begins with an extended passage in the indigenous Zulu language.
God Help the Outcasts
For 1996’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, based upon the 1831 novel by Victor Hugo, Disney once again turned to Alan Menken. The rather dark God Help the Outcasts, is sung by the Roma girl, Esmerelda, as a fervent prayer to the Virgin Mary which is overheard by Quasimodo, the deformed bellringer of the Parisian cathedral of Notre Dame. Stephen Schwartz wrote the lyrics for this religious song.
Go the Distance
Disney followed Hunchback with Hercules (1997) and again tapped Alan Menken and composer and songwriter, with lyricist David Zippel. Their Go the Distance accompanies a turning point in the story: where, during a moment of loneliness, young Hercules-isolated because of his inability to control his own strength– finds that his parents adopted him a foundling, and they reveal a medallion with the symbol of the gods on it that was around his neck. This sets him off on a quest to reclaim his godhood.
When She Loved Me
Toy Story (1995), produced by Disney subsidiary Pixar, is a great movie: not only is it a fine “buddy picture.” it is an imaginative look into the inner lives of toys! However, it is among the great technical landmarks of filmmaking: the first fully computer-animated feature film. It’s composed, Randy Newman, earned Academy Award nominations for Best Score and Best Song (You’ve Got a Friend In Me) that year. Small wonder, then, that Pixar asked him to score the sequel, Toy Story 2 in 1999. Newman wrote the profoundly sad When She Loved Me for a montage showing how cowgirl doll Jessie’s beloved owner, Emily, eventually outgrew her and abandoned Jessie at a roadside donation site. Sarah McLaughlin sang the song on the soundtrack, and it earned Newman a Grammy Award.
The Climb
Before she became a grown-up popstar making sometimes questionable wardrobe choices (I’m thinking Wrecking Ball...), Miley Cyrus was a squeaky-clean teen actress in the Disney channel sitcom Hannah Montana. Here, she plays the role of Miley Ray Stewart, who adopts the guise of a slightly geeky, normal teenager, to keep her other life as pop star Hannah Montana, a secret. Disney stretched the same premise into a feature film in 2009, Hannah Montana: The Movie. Jessi Alexander and Jon Mabe wrote The Climb, a slowly-evolving power ballad about life’s journey, for what turned out to be the movie’s climactic moment: just after Miley reveals her secret identity.
I’ve Got a Dream
Alan Menken’s ninth and most resent film score for Disney was Tangled (2010), a slightly twisted version of the fairytale Rapunzel from the Brother’s Grimm. I’ve Got a Dream, with hilarious lyrics by Glenn Slater, is a showstopper sung by Rapunzel and the somewhat disreputable hero, Flynn Rider, and the inhabitants of a dive bar called the Snuggling Duckling. At first, the thug's, led by terrifying Hook Hand, thoroughly intimidate Rapunzel and Flynn. But soon show themselves to be a bunch of softies...with aspirations to be artistic!
Vuelie, In Summer, Let it Go
In 2013, Disney’s megahit Frozen became the highest-grossing animated film to date, earning nearly $1.3 billion at the box office. This movie had a fairytale plot, based loosely upon a story by Hans Christian Anderson: following Princess Anna on a journey to find her estranged-and magically powerful– sister Elsa, who unwittingly trapped the kingdom in everlasting winter. With an eye towards establishing the film’s Norwegian setting, Christophe Beck, who scored Frozen, provided a striking choral piece, Vuelie, for the opening credits, based upon the traditional music of the Sami, an indigenous people who live in the tundra that stretches across of the northern reaches of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia. It is an adaptation of the 2002 song Eatnemen Vuelie (Song of the Earth) by Norwegian/Sami musician Frode Fjellheim. It was performed on the soundtrack by the acclaimed Norwegian choir Cantus. The more conventional songs were written by the wife-husband team of Kirsten Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. Their very funny In Summer is an old-fashioned “soft shoe” song -and- dance tune for the thoroughly naïve snowman Olaf: who sentimentally-and cluelessly-longs to do whatever frozen things do in summer heat. Of course, the great hit from Frozen is Elsa’s powerful Let it Go, sung unforgettably by Idina Menzel. This accompanies the moment where Elsa resolves to embrace her own power.
Remember Me
Disney’s 2017 Coco was another huge hit. Based upon the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead, (El dia de los muertos), it tells the story of Miguel, a young boy from a family of shoemakers who desperately wants to become a mariachi singer. Following the success with Frozen, Disney once again tapped Kirsten Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. After researching Mexican popular styles, they produced the gentle ranchera-style Remember Me. This song shows up in several guise’s during the movie, and in different generations of Miguel’s family: as a lullaby sung to his Great-grandmother Coco as a young child, as a big production number sung by his idol Ernesto de la Cruz, and as a plea sung by Miguel to Coco, now elderly and dying. It won both an Oscar and a Grammy that year.
How Far I’ll Go
2016’s Moana is set in Polynesia, where Moana, the daughter of the chief, sets out on a quest to save her people, who are threatened by a blight that is killing their crops. As she resolves to make her way into the unknown, she sings the aspirational How Far I’ll Go. This song is reprised at the end, as she leads here people on a bold migration across the sea. It was written by Broadway superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda. Miranda reportedly locked himself into his childhood bedroom at his parents’ home for a few days, in order to adjust his perspective back to age 16 to capture the essence of this song.
We Don’t Talk About Bruno
Like Coco, Disney’s Encanto (2021) deals with a multigenerational Hispanic family, but in this case the setting is Columbia, and the family business is magic. The main character is Mirabel Madrigal, who unlike her family, was apparently born without a magical gift. She discovers out that the Madrigal magic is fading and eventually seeks help from her outcast Uncle Bruno. Colombia has a particularly rich culture, particularly its music, which channels influences from the Caribbean, Africa, Spain, and many indigenous peoples of the country. Lin-Manuel Miranda did a fine job incorporating many of these musical influences in his songs for the movie. We Don’t Talk About Bruno-sung by the entire Madrigal clan-for example, is a salsa tune with elements of the Cuban guajira.