11/08/2009

I forgot how much I love this song

Being born in 1987, I was the perfect audience for Disney's animation renaissance in the last decade of the 20th Century. As much as I watched and listened to the music of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King as a kid, I'll deny absolutely loving those movies now*.

And then I hear one of the songs from them and I get goose bumps and realize I know every lyric.

Take "Part of Your World" from 1989's The Little Mermaid for example:


The voice of Ariel, Jodi Benson, also voiced an old (non-Disney) favorite: Thumbelina (1994).

Watching The Little Mermaid now, it's fairly apparently film that it has an anti-feminist message about a shapely teenager in a seashell bra who finds out she can still get a man just based on looks. And there's the hidden penises all over the place, and a frighteningly buxom villain; the film is kind of a mess.

But just listening to this song, it's clear there is some brilliance in this, and it helps me get over the fact that I watch this movie 234987 times a week when I was 5.

Alan Menken, you're a musical genius.

*How many versions of "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" did you have to sit through in various talent shows?

2 comments:

  1. Notes: I got "The Little Mermaid" on VHS for my 7th birthday, so it was one of the few movies we actually owned. Also, in the eighth grade, my friends and I re-wrote the lyrics to apply to southeastern pre-colonial Native American tribes ("Part of Our Tribe", anyone?). We made a video where I sang it from inside a teepee at Jenni Ball's house while Lisa Adamson played the piano. It was very sensitive. That is all.

    ReplyDelete