Disney music is a genre in itself, and I probably listen to it more than any other type of music (I have three playlists on Spotify just for Disney music). Composer Alan Menken is responsible for some of my favorite music from Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Hercules, Tangled, and more. And while I love listening to Disney's bops, Disney music has more important implications than catchy song lyrics. In any musical, but especially Disney musicals, songs are one of the most effective storytelling vehicles. Character or setting content that would normally take up valuable time can be condensed into three minutes of catchy tunes and lyrics, with musical tones adding depth and emotions to the story. While there are many functions behind Disney songs, there are a few that seem to pop up in most musicals.
Change, Setting, and Conflict
In my blog post about world-building, I mentioned the use of music to cover time or change. Frozen's "Do you Want to Build a Snowman" establishes conflict and shows the passage of time. Both training montages in Mulan's "I'll Make a Man Out of You" and Hercules' "One Last Hope" and "Zero to Hero" cover character development and change in under four minutes.
Disney also uses opening ballads to establish setting and prime the audience about possible conflicts. "Arabian Nights" (albeit, a bit problematic in the original) begins Aladdin's story with a description of the fictional Agrabah, with lyrics that are accompanied by visuals of the desert and sky. The Princess and the Frog follows a similar path by beginning and ending the movie with two different versions of"Down in New Orleans." Because The Princess and the Frog is the most modern of the princess films and the only one besides Pocahontas to be set in the U.S., the music plays an even more important role in informing the audience to a shift in the usual princess movie settings.
The lyrics in "Down in New Orleans," along with the accompanying visuals, introduce us to the setting of The Princess and the Frog. We also get a brief glimpse of the story's villain, Dr. Facilier, and we develop a sense of Tiana's character as we walk through her daily schedule.
The Villain Song
The villain song isn't featured in every film, but when it does make an appearance, it plays an important role in the story. Villain songs either introduce us to or reinforce the villain's motivations or they further the villain's plot line. It's interesting, then, that villain songs rarely appeared in the earlier films, and even then, older Disney villain songs were shorter and less developed than modern ballads. This change is on track with the gradual development of Disney conflicts and villains in general; Scar from The Lion King or Gaston from Beauty and the Beast are more complex villains than Snow White's Evil Queen. For the princess movies specifically, Ursula had the first villain song, marking a new era of princess movies with villains that were more than just shallow and jealous women (though Ursula does, admittedly, still fill this role a little bit). Since then, we've received gems like "Gaston," a hilarious critique of excessive masculinity. There's "Be Prepared," an intelligently crafted song with political implications that audiences have connected to historical tyrants. And The Princess and the Frog's "Friends on the Other Side" provides the most information about Dr. Facilier than any other segment in the film while also igniting the central conflict between protagonists and antagonists.
My personal favorite villain song, "Gaston's" clever lyrics aren't just superior because of the wordplay. I encourage you to watch the clip while listening closely to the lyrics. They're both hilarious and slightly unsettling. You can take just about any line from the song, examine it in isolation from the rest of the lyrics, and have a pretty good idea of Gaston's character.
The Disney films that lack a villain song usually have a reason that's tied to the presentation of the villain or conflict. Hercules, which is otherwise filled with music, doesn't feature a song from Hades, and as much as I would love a Hades ballad, the audience doesn't really need a song to establish the intentions of a mythological character that most are familiar with: the god of the underworld. Frozen, too, doesn't include a villain song—unless you count "Love is an Open Door," but even then, if the audience doesn't know that it's a villain song at first, I don't think it counts. The lack of a villain song makes sense considering we don't find out Hans is a villain until the end, but the movie wasn't always going to lack the malicious musical number. Elsa was originally the villain of Frozen with "Let It Go" serving as her villain ballad; after writing the song, however, the storytellers saw potential in Elsa as the protagonist, which completely changed the arc of the movie.
The Love Ballad
Around longer than the villain song, love ballads are a staple in most Disney princess movies and even a few non-princess movies. Whether they are duets or solo proclamations of love, the audience expects any Disney musical romance to feature swoon-worthy lyrics. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs set the stage as both the first princess movie and musical romance to include a love ballad; in fact, it has two: "I'm Wishing/One Song" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come."
For storytelling purposes, the love ballad's main function is consistency. So many musical romances have included a love song that if a movie does not feature one, something feels lacking. For example, The Princess in the Frog includes the short "Ma Belle Evangeline," but this love ballad is from Ray the firefly to Evangeline the star/assumedly former firefly. We never get a romantic duo with Tiana and Naveen, and at least for me, the movie always felt a little off because of it.
Similarly, Frozen's "love song" straddles the line between a love ballad and a quasi-villain manipulation song, but it makes sense that the eventual romance of Anna and Kristoff isn't explored with the typical romantic lyrics; after all, the movie's story works hard to separate itself from the normal love story portrayed in princess movies and instead show the sisterly bond.
Forever angry that Frozen gave us this absolute BOP of a love song only to reveal to us that Hans actually sucks. Singing along to this song is always slightly tinged by the fact that Hans is a terrible person.
What are some of your favorite Disney songs? Do they further the story in any significant way? Send me a message or drop a comment below!
Until later, have courage and be kind.
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