How Far I'll Go
the best disney movie musical "I want" songs
Given my last piece’s relative downer vibe, I wanted to do something a little bit lighter and a little bit softer. Here’s hoping you’ll enjoy it. Now brace for the hard pivot from the death of Kurt Cobain:
The legendary musical theatre choreographer, director, and producer Bob Fosse said that all musicals have just three songs:
“I Am” songs that explain a character’s setting
“I Want” songs that explain a character’s desires
and “New” songs that add a new wrinkle to the plot.
Structurally speaking, musicals usually have four times in which to deploy their most important songs, according to theatre professor John Kenrick:
The Opener - typically an “I Am” song, sometimes mixing in a “New” twist to establish the basics of the story.
The Main “I Want” - the thing that pushes the story up Plot Mountain, usually within the first fifteen minutes of the show.
The Eleven O'clock - the “New” song that propels the audience with the energy to make it through the last half of the second act.
The Closer - a delightful police procedural starring Kyra Sedgwick. Or a reprise of the best song in the show, usually the “I Want” song from the first act.
Today’s article is a bit of a hyper-specific niche: the best “I Want” songs in Disney movie musicals.
I was not raised as a Disney kid, mainly because there was no way we were ever going to afford Disney World, much less Disneyland. Plus, basic cable charged extra for Disney Channel and we definitely did not have premium cable money. As a result, I grew up on the heady mixture of Nickelodeon and Warner Brothers along with whatever cheap public domain cartoons made their way onto the UHF networks. That being said, I’m more familiar with musical theatre conventions than your typical AMAB heterosexual thanks to a passion for literature and language.
On the other hand, the lovely and talented Thea Rettical grew up as a confirmed Disney kid, to the point where her childhood house served as a shrine to the Mouse. (It still does, but Thea has long since moved out and left it to her mother, the person who initially decorated it. Thea would like me to stress that she played no role in said decorations.) Thea’s family also scrimped and saved to take yearly trips to Disney World, so she is definitely more qualified to have opinions about Disney. For the record, her training in literature exceeds mine, though she works primarily in nonfiction and technical writing these days.
With our powers combined, we’re going to list our top fifteen Disney “I Want” songs, talk about them a little bit, and invite criticism for our choices. I’m sure you’ll have opinions, so be sure to share them in the comments or via social media. Without further ado, let’s get into the fifteenth spot:
15. Just Around the Riverbend (Pocahontas)
Composer: Alan Menken
Lyricist: Stephen Schwartz
Year: 1995
Principal Performer(s): Judy Kuhn
LK: Pocahontas is the odd duck from the Disney Renaissance. It’s based on a real-life person, as Pocahontas is the only Disney princess in which that’s the case (excepting Lightning McQueen). That being said, the story is far removed from the actual history, though Disney wasn’t ready to make a bold statement about the plight of Indigenous people in the Americas and the bloody results of their invasion. For example, the historical Pocahontas was twelve when the “events” depicted happened, adding one more problematic layer to her relationship to the thirty-year old John Smith. By the way, her intervention to save Smith from execution was almost certainly an embellishment added by Smith, adapted from his time as a knight in service of the King of Transylvania (yes, really). She ended up traveling to England at the age of twenty under the watch of her husband John Rolfe (as inaccurately portrayed in Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World), who was only nine years older than her. She was dead the next year under mysterious circumstances, falling ill on the voyage back to Jamestown. For an article I wanted to be more uplifting than the last one, I’m not doing a very good job. Perhaps Thea can take over with number fourteen…
14. Almost There (The Princess and the Frog)
Composer and Lyricist: Randy Newman
Year: 2009
Principal Performer(s): Anika Noni Rose
Thea: Before Disney acquired Pixar, the company had announced that Home on the Range, a cow-centric Western musical, would be the last traditionally animated film. After Disney acquired Pixar (and got meh reviews plus not-so-great box office earnings), they totally changed their mind. After some negotiations, John Musker and Ron Clements, the duo behind The Great Mouse Detective (remind me to tell y’all about how five-year-old me went searching for the detective in Big Ben), The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, and Treasure Planet, reunited to direct The Princess and the Frog. They decided to turn the traditional fairy tale on its head and have the backdrop be the magical city of New Orleans. And what kind of music fits New Orleans so well? Jazz. And who’s the best composer for the job? Randy Newman. Newman’s New Orleans and jazz background, along with his previous Disney experience, made him the perfect choice. He incorporated gospel, jazz, blues, and zydeco to create this distinctive soundtrack. The animation for this song is top notch. Using an art deco style, it perfectly captures the magic and tone of the song. The Art Deco style is known to represent glamour and luxury, and that’s how Tiana wants her future restaurant to be like. It’s a modern take on 1920’s cabaret advertising, something that Paul Colin or Charles Loupot would create. It feels so out of place for Disney, but so right for Tiana.
13. Someday My Prince Will Come (Snow White)
Composer: Frank Churchill
Lyricist: Larry Morey
Year: 1937
Principal Performer(s): Adriana Caselotti
LK: The first Disney musical provides us with one of the finest “I Want” songs that still holds up today. Walt Disney believed in this project so much he mortgaged his own house, much the same way Kevin Smith put Clerks on his own credit cards. (That will be the only comparison I’ll ever make between the two until and unless Smith gets his head cryogenically frozen.) The music was composed by medical student turned songwriter Frank Churchill, who had worked with Disney since 1930. The lyrics were provided by Larry Morey, a musical genius with only one functioning arm who didn’t let his inability to play the piano stop him from becoming Disney’s go-to wordsmith. Caselotti was a nineteen year old wunderkind at the time of her casting, coming from a musical family filled with opera singers, music teachers, and instrumentalists. The song became a standard after Dave Brubeck released his Dave Digs Disney album in 1956; later on Miles Davis performed what many believe to be the definitive jazz take on his 1961 album of the same name. Listen in:
12. Belle (Beauty and the Beast)
Composer: Alan Menken
Lyricist: Howard Ashman
Year: 1991
Principal Performer(s): Paige O’Hara (Belle), Richard White (Gaston)
Thea: Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, the dream team behind The Little Mermaid (and Broadway’s Little Shop of Horrors), came together again after the major success of The Little Mermaid. LK will talk a little more about Ashman later in this list, but let me say that this is some of Ashman’s finest work. The duo were brought on after Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted the whole movie rewritten into a musical. The story was fleshed out to include more side characters and a true villain in Gaston. Paige O’Hara competed against 500 other women and won the coveted role of Belle. According to co-director Kirk Wise, she "had a unique quality, a tone she would hit that made her special", and he was totally right. She brings such depth and warmth and complexity to a potentially simple character like Belle.
Ashman and Menken wanted to create something that sounded different from The Little Mermaid. While TLM had a more pop feel, BatB felt more characteristically Broadway, and that’s intentional. The rewrite basically made the film a stage production, so that’s how Ashman and Menken treated the soundtrack. All of the songs are created to provide the audience with a lot of information and character development as well as move the story along. In “Belle”, we learn who our heroine and villain are, what their motivations are, and the overall theme of the story (that being weird is bad and you should conform to your surroundings, duh). “Belle” can be seen as an operetta, a light and fluffy piece that includes spoken dialogue, dancing, and fun, and the song definitely provides that levity. Plus it was cool for kiddo Thea to see a princess who liked books.
This is a groundbreaking film. It won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, the first animated movie to ever do it! It was also the first animated film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but lost to The Silence of the Lambs (talk about two drastically different movies…).
11. After Today (A Goofy Movie)
Composer: Tom Snow
Lyricist: Jack Feldman
Year: 1995
Principal Performer(s): Aaron Lohr (and a substantial chorus)
LK: You weren’t expecting this one, were you? Hardly considered part of the legendary Disney animation revival, A Goofy Movie is better than it has any right to be. Although production-wise it might be better lumped in with dreck like 101 Dalmatians II: Path’s London Adventure, Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure, or Tinkerbell’s Tumultuous Tampa Road Trip, it’s a genuinely good movie. (Okay, I made the last one up.) Thankfully, it’s received a significant nostalgia bump in light of its wide-release on Disney+ and my generation’s desire to forget that we’re old. The songwriters are best known for other songs; Snow wrote “Let’s Hear It For the Boy” by Deniece Williams, while Feldman is responsible for Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana”. This is also the rare Disney “I Want” song that isn’t the showstopper, despite its great quality. Instead, that spot is decisively taken by the powerhouse that is Powerline’s “I 2 I”, recorded by the inimitable Tevin Campbell.
10. Out There (Hunchback of Notre Dame)
Composer: Alan Menken
Lyricist: Stephen Schwartz
Year: 1996
Principal Performer(s): Tom Hulce (Quasimodo), Tony Jay (Claude Frollo)
Thea: I thought this article wouldn’t be a downer, but The Hunchback of Notre Dame brings us right back to the bottom. With such cheery plot mechanics like lust, damnation, and infanticide, it’s a surprise that anything from this movie can sound uplifting. And for awhile, it doesn’t.
The start of the song is Quasimodo and Frollo going back and forth about how the world is an awful place and Frollo is the only person who “cares” about him. Frollo tries to scare Quasimodo into staying in the cathedral where no one will see him. But Quasimodo only wants to be free:
And out there
Living in the sun
Give me one day out there
All I ask is one
To hold forever
The score of “Out There” feeds into the juxtaposition of the lyrics. Frollo’s part is much slower, deeper, and sinister sounding. Pair that with the animated facial expressions, and you can see he’s a phony. Quasimodo’s part, however, is different. When Frollo sings, Quasimodo’s voice is quiet, soft, and timid. Once Frollo leaves and Quasimodo is alone, he’s able to truly express himself, and the song gets louder and more jubilant. Quasimodo wants the chance to explore the world and discover how he fits into it. It very much feels like a child standing up to their parent and the parent not wanting to let go (but in this case, the parent is very, very evil).
Doesn’t this remind you of another movie and song combo? Maybe we’ll talk about it soon…
9. When Will My Life Begin? (Tangled)
Composer: Alan Menken
Lyricist: Glenn Slater
Year: 2010
Principal Performer(s): Mandy Moore
Thea: Actually, we’re talking about it here. Can’t you see the parallels? Main character locked away in a tower by their parental figure… parental figure has a pretty awesome solo that perfectly explains their motivations… main character being rescued by a pretty man… you see it, right?
Alan Menken even knew that “When Will My Life Begin?” and “Out There” were super similar. The main difference, he said, was that Quasimodo knew he wanted to get out, but Rapunzel was scared to escape. For Quasimodo, the audience wants him free because he himself wants to be free. For Rapunzel, the audience wants her freedom for her, and she figures it out along the way.
Another struggle for Menken was trying to combine Disney storytelling with Pixar storytelling. This idea of blending old (Disney) with new (Pixar) bled into other aspects of the film. The overall soundtrack was an experiment in blending medieval music with 1960’s folk rock a la Joni Mitchell. The styles of songs that the characters sing reflect their ages and mindsets. Mother Gothel’s songs feel old and ancient, while Rapunzel’s feel more young. Overall, I feel the blend was very successful and is a cool subliminal way to show the theme of growing up.
(LK: should we mention the fan theory that Mother Gothel is just the second form of Snow White’s Evil Queen? Or the even stranger one that she’s a time-shifted Megara from Hercules? Nah. Too weird.)
8. Reflection (Mulan)
Composer: Matthew Wilder
Lyricist: David Zippel
Year: 1998
Principal Performer(s): Lea Salonga
LK: I would prefer not to be banned entirely by the Chinese government because of this entry, but I probably already have been. The original soundtrack to this movie was going to be composed by Disney legend Stephen Schwartz, who went as far to travel to China in 1994 to prepare. Schwartz was offered the chance to score DreamWorks’ The Prince of Egypt, a project spearheaded by former Disney head Jeffrey Katzenberg. After threats of ruining careers and removing names from existing work, Schwartz left Mulan to be replaced by Wilder and Zippel. Zippel was the lyricist for Hercules, so was already in the Disney family. Wilder had been working on an adaptation of Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven, a story of castrati in nineteenth century Italy. Somehow, the head of Disney’s music division thought that would be the direction to go for Mulan. Wilder is and was best known as a one-hit wonder with 1983’s “Break My Stride”:
The song “Reflections” is a true show-stopper, and despite Lea Salonga’s considerable talent, she is not the best performer of the song. That honor goes to someone who had already been part of the House of Mouse. After a brief run as a Mouseketeer on The All-New Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and a failed stint as an idol singer in Japan, Christina Aguilera was at her wits’ end trying to make a career in music happen, all at the tender age of seventeen. Her demo of Whitney Houston’s “Run to You” (featuring a scarily high E5 note) proved to Disney that she could hit that same note in “Reflections”, paving the way for her appearance on the soundtrack as the “pop” version. That song got her a record deal with RCA, and kickstarted her legacy. Listen here:
7. Waiting on a Miracle (Encanto)
Composer and Lyricist: Lin-Manuel Miranda
Year: 2021
Principal Performer(s): Stephanie Beatriz
LK: Thea is a huge Hamilton fan, and it played a decisive role in one of our first dates so I always have fond memories of it. I sniped this entry from her, so I hope she isn’t too upset with me. I mean, how many chances will there be to talk about Lin-Manuel Miranda in this article? (#foreshadowing) Perhaps the most impressive thing about this song is Beatriz’s performance. Although not known as a singer, she does have musical background with two featured singing roles. First was as General Sweet Mayhem in The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, a box-office disappointment that nonetheless had a catchy soundtrack. More importantly and more relevantly, she had a starring role as Carla in Miranda’s other big 2021 project, a film adaptation of his play In the Heights. What makes her role as Mirabel stand out is not only the range and breadth she shows as a singer, but that she was actively in labor with her daughter Rosaline as she was recording this song. Never doubt the power of a mother.
6. Go the Distance (Hercules)
Composer: Alan Menken
Lyricist: David Zippel
Year: 1996
Principal Performer(s): Roger Bart
Thea: I love this movie and pretty much everything about it. The animation style is so distinctly different from previous and future films, the humor is on point (although I didn’t get much of it when it was released… since I was seven), and the songs are amazing. Hercules would be Alan Menken’s last Disney Renaissance film, and he came out swingin’. He partnered with lyricist David Zippel to create a soundtrack that was drastically different from anything else The Mouse had produced. The two, alongside screenwriter and co-director John Musker, decided to take us to Greece via the gospel route (ain’t that the truth). Musker explained that gospel lends itself well to storytelling and that they “were looking for a modern equivalent for the Greek references and this style of music seemed to be entertaining and a real departure at the same time”. Although the soundtrack as a whole received rave reviews from its peers, earning itself Oscar and Golden Globe nominations (but losing both to Titanic’s “My Heart Will Go On”), the critics were less than impressed. Filmtracks noted that “Go the Distance” is the album’s “only redeeming song” and that Roger Bart (singing voice actor) had “a whiny voice”. However, Michael Bolton’s rendition is “finely tuned”. It wouldn’t be the last time he sang about a Disney man.
5. Let It Go (Frozen)
Composers and Lyricists: Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
Year: 2013
Principal Performer(s): Idina Menzel
If you were around children (or Disney adults) in 2013, you heard “Let It Go” ad nauseum to the point it lost all meaning. It was the first song from a Disney animated musical to reach the Billboard top ten in almost twenty years, following 1995’s “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas. The song won an Oscar, a Grammy, a Critic’s Choice Award, and a Radio Disney Music Award. (Frankly that last one feels like an inside job.) The overwhelming critical success of the song led co-writer Robert Lopez to hit for the cycle with an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony, shout out to Philip Michael Thomas). Lopez and his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez were instrumental in changing the tone of the entire movie with this song; at first, Elsa was written as a fairly standard villain, but upon hearing “Let It Go”, directors Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck revamped her narrative arc to make her more sympathetic. This shift defines the movie, showing that attitudes can change and that just because you do bad things doesn’t make you an intrinsically bad person. That being said, “Let It Go” isn’t actually the best song in Frozen, nor is it even the best “I Want” song in the movie. What is? Let’s ask Thea…
4. For the First Time in Forever (Frozen)
Composers and Lyricists: Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
Year: 2013
Principal Performer(s): Kristen Bell (Anna), Adele Dazeem Idina Menzel (Elsa)
Thea: This is the best song in the movie! After a bit of a downer in the plot, this song pops up and changes the mood. It came in at just the right time. It almost didn’t make it in the movie! The Lopezes wrote this in June 2013… five months before the release date. Talk about cutting it close! Throughout the entire production, the Lopezes knew that they’d be compared to other songwriting greats, mainly Menken and Ashman. Whenever they got stuck, they’d ask themselves “What would Ashman do?” Someone should make that into a bracelet.
The song got great reviews, with one review saying that it "feed(s) off Anna’s frenetic and anxious energy and awkwardness, a classic example of mixing sophistication with silliness". I don’t know how sophisticated it would have been if they kept the original lyric of “I hope that I don’t vomit in his face” instead of changing it to “I wanna stuff some chocolate in my face”.
This song encapsulates both Anna’s and Elsa’s view of the world around them. Anna is hopeful, Elsa is fearful. Anna is ready to open the doors to her future, and Elsa wants to lock herself away and hide. Anna is so full of joy and laughter and wonder, and Elsa is very serious and methodical.
3. How Far I’ll Go (Moana)
Composer and Lyricist: Lin-Manuel Miranda
Year: 2016
Principal Performer(s): Auli’i Cravalho
Thea: Thank goodness I get to talk about LMM. I thought LK was gonna steal it again!
I remember seeing Moana for the first time and being absolutely fascinated with the animation. The opening sequence with Baby Moana in particular was what drew me in. The water felt… real. Like I could touch the TV screen and my finger would be wet. Every time I watch this movie I still feel like this. And I guess in a way, that’s what Moana feels during “How Far I’ll Go”. She’s pulled to the water and wants to feel everything for herself and find out what’s there.
Lin Manuel Miranda had a major struggle when writing “How Far I’ll Go”. Frozen was still super popular, and he knew that since this was the next big release, the two films would be compared. He had to constantly repeat to himself “Don’t write ‘Let It Go’!” This song - and this movie - had to feel different. He knew that in order to write the perfect “I Want” song, he had to focus on Moana’s inner struggles. What does she want? What makes her unique? What makes her special? Why are her friends a pig and a chicken?
In order to really get into the groove and think about what motivates a teenager, he went back to his parents’ house and wrote in his childhood bedroom. He says of the experience:
“I kind of went method for it! I like, locked myself up in my bedroom and it was like ‘All right, you’re 16 years old, and the distance between you and what you want is impossible!’”
Hey man, you do you. Obviously, it worked.
2. I Just Can’t Wait to Be King (The Lion King)
Composer: Elton John
Lyricist: Tim Rice
Year: 1994
Principal Performer(s): Jason Weaver (Simba), Rowan Atkinson (Zazu), Laura Williams (Nala)
LK: I’ve written extensively about good old Reg Dwight before. Now where’s that link? Oh yes, here it is:
Rocket Man
With Sir Elton’s piece more or less complete, I'll focus on Sir Timothy Rice instead. Rice is renowned for his work with Andrew Lloyd Webber (hock ptooey) on three of the most groundbreaking musicals of the Sixties and Seventies: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita. 1984’s Chess with the less visually interesting half of ABBA was somewhat of a downturn, although Rice’s affair with lead actress Elaine Paige did result in a decade-long relationship. Does that count as a win? Afterwards, he reunited with Lloyd Webber for Cricket, a throwaway musical written for the Queen’s sixtieth birthday. Rice and Lloyd Webber were well-connected to the Thatcher government, being staunch conservatives and therefore (am I using this term right?) “Tory scum”. Rice’s next big success (sans Lloyd Webber) was in re-working the lyrics of the late great Howard Ashman for Aladdin, then doing the same for the stage adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. 1994 saw the beginning of his triumphant partnership with Elton John, culminating in the musical Aida in addition to The Lion King and non-union Disney equivalent The Road to El Dorado. That was his last truly original work, the remainder of his career being either adaptations of existing properties (The Wizard of Oz, From Here to Eternity) or reworking his own songs into new iterations (the live-action Beauty and the Beast and Lion King). It’s safe to say that in terms of film, The Lion King remains his crowning achievement.
(Thea: Are we not going to mention that this is Safari Shakespeare? Because it’s Safari Shakespeare.)
(LK: Matthew Broderick thought he was being cast in a remake of Tezuka’s “Kimba the White Lion", so the theft is widespread enough to be inspiration instead of plagiarism.)
1. Part of Your World (The Little Mermaid)
Composer: Alan Menken
Lyricist: Howard Ashman
Year: 1989 (Thea: that’s the year I was born! Bet y’all feel old now.)
Principal Performer(s): Jodi Benson
LK: The crowning achievement of Disney musicals, though, is and will forever be The Little Mermaid. It is safe to say that without the success of the animation, direction, voice acting, and especially the songwriting of The Little Mermaid, the course of Disney as a media production company and a cultural touchstone looks very different. Prior to the ascension of TLM, the animation division of Disney was in a decline after Roy O.’s death in 1971. Although there were bright spots like The Rescuers in 1977, the failure of films like 1985’s The Black Cauldron meant that the division was close to being abandoned. When Don Bluth left the team in 1981 in the middle of production of The Fox and the Hound, it seemed like a matter of time. Like an arm being raised during a sleeper hold, 1986’s The Great Mouse Detective showed there were signs of life after Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney (son of Roy O. and nephew of Walt) tried to resurrect the company. Oliver and Company in 1988 built on that momentum, openly competing with Bluth’s The Land Before Time and winning the domestic box office battle.
Newly installed Disney Feature Animation head Peter Schneider decided to go for the throat by spearheading a long-planned adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Little Mermaid” into a bombastic Broadway-style musical. He had worked on Broadway as a company manager for The Little Shop of Horrors, so he reached out to the composer and lyricist of that show: Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. It was Ashman who proved instrumental in integrating the musical numbers into the movie, providing a backbone for the entire narrative. His role as co-producer alongside co-director John Musker allowed him to determine casting and tone for the film, and he made fantastic decisions. Ursula was the only exception to his vision; originally he wanted Bea Arthur, but settled on Elaine Stritch instead. Stritch and Ashman clashed (as she often did with producers), leading her to be replaced by veteran voice actress Pat Carroll in her first ever villainous role.
“Part of Your World” is, simply put, the finest moment of the Disney Renaissance. It pushes the story along, it establishes the character, it sets the tone, and it demonstrates the majesty of hand-drawn animation in evoking emotions. Lead animator Glen Keane (son of The Family Circus creator Bil Keane) showed why he was at the time the best animator on the planet not named Hayao Miyazaki. Jodi Benson radiated an enthralling combination of vulnerability and confidence that commands your attention. The music and lyrics blend into a wonderful mélange of skill, showing that rumors of Disney’s demise were not only premature, but they were entirely false. This song is so good it saved Disney from itself. What more needs to be said?
Ashman was already diagnosed with AIDS by the time of the film’s release in November 1989, and his work on both Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin remained unfinished at the time of his death in March 1991. Tim Rice stepped in to complete the songs, and Beauty and the Beast is dedicated to his memory. Ashman stands as the finest lyricist in Disney history, and arguably the finest in musical theatre history.
Thank you for joining us this week on an exploration of Disney animated musicals. I know it’s a little off the beaten path, but I am hopeful my readers will bear with us as I follow my interests (and Thea’s, let’s be honest). Next time out, I’ll be focusing on a brand-new release that’s put into context by the past. No more spoilers past that. See you later, space cowboys!
Top 7 untouchable. Put em in whatever order you want, I say. They are phenomenal.