What is the best Disney soundtrack?
With America facing pandemic, devastating wildfires, and creeping authoritarianism at home and abroad, Ben takes a look at what really matters.
Disney movie musicals. You know ‘em. You love ‘em. Is there a need to rank which one has the best soundtrack? Probably not, but that’s why I’m here - so you don’t have to!
Now, any ranking like this is going to be at least a little subjective, which is why it’s good that I am brilliant. But if you plebeians dare to question my rankings, allow me to share my methodology.
First, I did not re-watch any movies to compile this list. If I was not familiar enough with a movie or its soundtrack to make a judgment, I assumed that it was not going to challenge for the title anyway. The only movie this probably hurt in any way was The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I haven’t seen since 1996, and since I refuse to trust the judgment of any seven-year-old (even myself), I left that one out.
Canonical movies only, and only musicals. No sequels (sorry, Aladdin and the King of Thieves and Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride).
Soundtracks were judged in the following categories, discussed further below:
Hero song (5 possible points)
Villain song (4)
Sidekick song (4)
Love song (3)
X Factor (5)
Rest of soundtrack (4)
for a total possible score of 25. Obviously, it helped if a movie had songs to fill in all of these categories, but I was relatively generous with my definitions, and I gave myself pretty wide latitude with the last two categories.
Hero song: Who is the emblematic protagonist of the movie? What song best illustrates who they are, especially (though not always) early in the movie?
Villain song: Who (or what) opposes the protagonist? What motivates them? Is there complexity to this force? Is the villain a worthy opponent to the hero?
Sidekick song: Does a tertiary character have meaningful character expressed in song? Most importantly, does that song freaking slap?
Love song: Not all heroes need a love interest, which is why this is worth the fewest points, but if they have one, do they get to have a great moment together? (N.B. I do extend this to mother/son love songs on a couple of occasions.)
X Factor: Does this soundtrack have musical or cultural significance for reasons outside of its place in the Disney canon? Is there a second sidekick song that can’t fit into the main rankings but is equally memorable? Do I cry every time I listen to one song? This is the place where I could reward that.
Rest of soundtrack: Do I skip songs when I listen to the album? Is the incidental music also good? Can everyone who’s supposed to sing… actually sing?
With all that in mind, there were a few surprises. First, it took a really long time for Disney to figure out a successful musical formula, and some of the early soundtracks are downright bad. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, from 1937, scored a resounding 9 points; the love song, “Someday My Prince Will Come,” resembles nothing so much as a knife carving through dry ice. Other early movies struck out with me, as well. The songs from Pinocchio and Dumbo are surprisingly short and uninteresting outside of one or two phrases; divorced from their visuals, there’s not much to recommend these soundtracks.
In fact, up until the Disney Renaissance (1989-1999), there are only a few standout soundtracks. One is Cinderella (1950), which features some excellent vocal performances and two genuinely memorable songs: “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” and “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.” 1951’s Alice In Wonderland gives us “The Unbirthday Song,” and in 1967, The Jungle Book introduced us to “The Bare Necessities” and “I Wan’na Be Like You.” I’m ignoring a few that I haven’t seen in a while (shoutout to The Aristocats!) but still, a survey of the first half century of Disney musicals probably yields only a dozen truly strong songs total.
Starting in 1989, the studio shifted course, and Disney’s theatrical-release animated musicals became its prestige projects. This trend was already under way, but the success of The Little Mermaid paved the way for a near-yearly string of hits. As Disney and Pixar began their Linklater-esque love affair, the focus on animated musicals fell away a bit, but recent successes like Moana and the Frozen franchise keep the animated movie musical very much part of the Disney DNA into the third decade of the new millennium.
Only a baker’s dozen made this list.
The List: A Lucky 13 Disney Musicals
Pocahontas (1995) - 11/25
I was surprised by this. But listen to the soundtrack again - outside of “Colors of the Wind” (a fantastic hero song, and a deserving 5/5), what is going on here? What is the villain song? There’s no love song - thank goodness, since Mel Gibson would be involved - and her sidekicks are a raccoon, a hummingbird, and a tree. It’s a beautiful movie, and surprisingly progressive (again, outside of Mel Gibson). But the soundtrack doesn’t do much for me.
Hercules (1997) - 15/25
Mulan (1998) - 15/25
Both of these movies really got screwed by the format, as neither have a villain song by any definition. What I never really noticed watching the movie is that Mulan is basically only a musical for 45 minutes - it literally only has 4 songs, plus one during the credits. Those four are all pretty awesome, though. Hercules has one truly great song (“Go the Distance”), and the Muses are a very cool framing device. However, Danny DeVito’s “One Last Hope” is meh at best, and its strong X factor can’t save it.
Beauty and the Beast (1992) - 16/25
To me, this is like the definition of a pretty good soundtrack. Belle gets a solid, but not amazing introduction, in her eponymous track, Gaston gets a top-end villain song, “Be Our Guest” is fun and memorable, and there’s a decent love song in “Something There.” This is a 72%, and I think that feels about right.
Tangled (2010) - 17/25
Frozen (2013) - 17/25
Tangled is a lot like Beauty and the Beast, with a slightly better hero song (“When Will My Life Begin” is a jam, y’all). Frozen is more complicated. It’s not altogether clear who or what is the villain here, but for the first half or so of the movie, it sure seems like Elsa is, then Hans from then on. But the problem facing all of them is not so much Hans’s duplicity (although, yeah, that too) as Elsa’s fear of her own powers. So I designated Anna as the hero - hence “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” is the hero song - and Elsa as the villain, although I didn’t feel great about it. That made “Let It Go” the villain song, where it clearly doesn’t really fit. But… it’s not the sidekick song (“In Summer”) or the love song (“Love is an Open Door”). This exercise weirdly made me like the actual movie Frozen less, because it really forced me to think about how little narrative sense that film makes.
The Little Mermaid (1989) - 18/25
Tarzan (1999) - 18/25
The Princess and the Frog (2009) - 18/25
Frozen II (2019) - 18/25
Apparently, exactly every ten years, Disney releases a darn good musical. What’s amazing is that none of these films’ soundtracks are much alike. The Little Mermaid is probably the most “traditional”; it starts with a good hero song in “Part of Your World,” has an iconic villain moment with “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” and absolute classics with “Under the Sea” and “Kiss the Girl.” That’s about it, though - turns out that when your main character literally can’t speak for most of the movie, it limits your options.
Tarzan was unusual in that nearly the whole soundtrack was non-diegetic and provided by a pop star, in this case Phil Collins. But ask any Disney fan who saw the movie in their formative years, and they will tell you just how hard that soundtrack rocks. There is no villain song, but the whole album makes up for it (I counted “Trashin’ the Camp” as the sidekick song and “You’ll Be In My Heart” as the love song).
The Princess and the Frog had a ton of music in it, fitting for a movie set in New Orleans, but it also made it tough to adjudicate. I ended up calling “Ma Belle Evangeline” the love song, despite that song not involving the main character in any way, because how could I not. “Friends on the Other Side” got one of only two perfect villain song scores; it’s a great song, sung excellently, and it literally has a chorus of demons in it. Nice work, Facilier.
Frozen II was, to me, a real love letter to Elsa. Although Anna has a truly wonderful, bittersweet song of her own (“The Next Right Thing”), “Into the Unknown” sets the narrative in motion and is the clear hero song. I struggled with what to call a love song, but settled on “Show Yourself,” a song all about Elsa learning to love herself and embrace who she really is. That left me with “Lost in the Woods” as a sidekick song; it’s fine, but the visuals make it funnier.
Moana (2016) - 19/25
Probably the only knock on this album is that there is no love song; however, I think the lack of a love interest actually makes the film Moana better, so it feels a bit wrong to penalize it for that. “How Far I’ll Go” is an absolute top-drawer hero song, sung by Auli’i Carvalho. I’m less taken by “Shiny” as a villain song (Te Fiti does not sing. so…), and I find Jermaine Clement to be a bit much. However, I think Dwayne Johnson acquitted himself admirably as Maui, and I was so thrilled to have Polynesian actors playing Polynesian roles here, even on the songs - we’re not that far removed from Donny Osmond singing in Mulan and Judy Kuhn singing in Pocahontas, after all.
Aladdin (1993) - 20/25
If only Jafar sang. Aladdin is absolutely stacked with songs, right from “Arabian Nights” over the credits. We have “One Jump Ahead” to introduce Aladdin, and one of the best love songs in the canon in “A Whole New World.” But the real magic here, no pun intended, are the two songs by Robin Williams as Genie: “Prince Ali” and “Friend Like Me.” The latter is absolutely the greatest sidekick song ever written, Disney or otherwise. I think that Williams’s energy is the most inimitable feature of Aladdin, and the reason Will Smith (or anyone else) was always going to fall just a little bit short.
The composer Alan Menken had this to say about Williams’s performance:
“We didn’t know who was going to play the genie when we wrote the song. We were looking at the character as black, a hipster, and I suggested a Fats Waller, Harlem stride-piano style from the ’40s. When Robin Williams was suggested, my first thought was ‘Can he sing like Fats Waller?’ Robin learned every note. He was working on Hook at the time, and he would come in after being stuck in a harness all day and sit at the piano and learn. When we went into the studio, we got exactly the Fats Waller performance we wanted, and then everyone said, ‘Okay, but now can we let Robin do his thing?’ He was amazing. That trumpet wah-wah-wah was supposed to be from an instrument, and he made it vocal. He took ahold of the creative process, both on that and ‘Prince Ali’ especially. My God, he went crazy on ‘Prince Ali.’ He was doing the Thanksgiving Day Parade, Arab-style.”
Any other actor, and I think this soundtrack moves down a few spaces. But Robin Williams was the genie, so it’s the runner-up.
The Lion King (1995) - 21/25
What’s interesting to me about saying that The Lion King is the best Disney soundtrack is how deserving it clearly is, and also how blah I feel about that. That’s not a knock on the movie, by any means, because the movie is amazing. But the soundtrack? It’s very solid throughout, but lacks the kind of ecstatic highs that “Friend Like Me” or “Show Yourself” can give me. I think the closest we get here is “Circle of Life,” which begins sharply and stunningly, featuring the Zulu language in the background vocals. It’s a really cool song, and rightly well-known and celebrated. Everything else? “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” is profoundly… sophomoric, but catchy. “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” is good, but pretty saccharine-sweet. “Hakuna Matata” is almost too self-aware. It’s just a fine album.
Except… then there’s “Be Prepared.”
Honestly, if I could give a bonus point for Jeremy “Lion” Irons leading a troupe of jack-booted hyenas in an elaborate goose-stepping, intimidating-AF song and dance number, I absolutely would. There is no part of that song that I don’t love. It is the best villain song in Disney history.
So there you go - The Lion King, on the strength of some fascist lions, comes out on top. Even a 21 only grades out to an 84% - a B, here in the States. And honestly? That feels right. How many people honestly pop on a Disney soundtrack while they’re driving or running, and don’t skip a single song? That’s not how we listen to these songs. Disney soundtracks are not meant to be totally cohesive albums, because they are music stripped of its visual half. If you enjoy listening to these Disney songs out of context of their movies, I think that says quite a bit about the quality of the music. So find your favorites, or maybe try one from this essay that you haven’t heard in a while, and let’s all listen to music that makes us happy while we try to make the world just a little bit better.