The Little Mermaid film to update 2 of the original songs
Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ live-action will feature updated lyrics to “Kiss The Girl” and “Poor Unfortunate Souls.”
The move is meant to emphasize the importance of consent and women empowerment. pic.twitter.com/CmQ9tampA8
- Pop Crave (@PopCrave) April 5, 2023
-The Little Mermaid live action film will update 2 key songs in TLM: Kiss the Girl and ( Read more... )
What was the first song that you did and why?
We discussed with Rob Marshall what he wanted. One was the Prince Eric song, called “Wild Unchartered Waters.” Then, there was the song for Ariel when she has her legs (doesn't have a voice), and she's singing her thoughts about all the firsts she is noticing for the first time. Then, there was a number called “Scuttlebutt” for Scuttle and Sebastian. It's this harebrained [song for them] trying to figure out what's going on because they hear rumors that the prince has decided to marry. They think it must be Ariel but of course it’s Ursela in the form of Vanessa. It's all this delicious imagination. Lin’s lyrics are to die for. We wrote a fourth song called “Impossible Child” for King Triton. It didn’t remain in the film only because dramaturgically we didn’t really need it. It was so great to work with Javier Bardem on that song and people will hear it as a DVD outtake, I guess.
There was a song, “Her Voice” for the Broadway show. But Rob really wanted a new song for this moment of waves and all the wildness of what's out there in the ocean. [Ariel] represented that to [Prince Eric]; she being the girl who saved his life. Live action films are really a director's medium. They want to go back to what they saw in the animation and take it fresh from there. That seems to be the pattern and I go along with it. Besides the fact that clearly, everybody wants a new song for the live action film for awards consideration.
“Wild Unchartered Waters” was very much in my wheelhouse as a composer with lyrics set to the music. I think it was probably the most intimidating for Lin because he felt like it was really stepping into Howard [Ashman’s] shoes. For the first time, I took the essence of a piece of music that had been in the underscore of the original Little Mermaid. It was a very lilting feel to the moment. Lin asked to make it more edgy and more a two against three tempo-wise, if you know what that means. So we gave it a lot more edge and then wrote to that which took on this incredible excitement. It's a real combo of the two but he had really influenced the musical field. On “Scuttlebutt,” I wrote a piece of music with an implied melody line. Lin took that piece of music and brilliantly rapped over it musically. So there's this whole new creation. There was a great moment when Lin sent an audio file from the bathroom of an Acela Express. He’s holding the music I wrote and singing to me the idea of what he wants while you hear a rumble of the train in the background. So, it was a very freeform collaboration. One reason people will work a lot is because they're adaptable. I like to be in the room with whoever I'm working with and start from scratch to get the essence of what that collaboration will be.
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It’s interesting because you’re so often associated with Howard Ashman, but you only worked together for a short amount of time. Anytime I watch these renaissance movies (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin), I wonder what you and Howard would have produced together if he were still here. You would have been like Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Howard wrote Smile with Marvin Hamlisch. He knew he was dying as he was writing that show. It was a beautiful score. Everyone wanted it to be a light, frothy, chorus girl musical but it really was about the dark side of beauty pageants. Within that show, there is a song called “Disneyland.” Marvin had just passed away and I wanted to play the song as part of my performance at D23 that year. I wanted to make it my own as I performed it. So for the first time, I sat in front of a Howard lyric that I had never worked with before and it was a visceral experience. It is shiny on the surface, but there's so much depth in terms of what's being said; the references and the connections. I just lost it. It was so emotional to remember what it was like sitting in front of a Howard Ashman lyric. Howard and I know other shows he wanted to do.
What were they?
We got halfway into a musical about Babe Ruth. We wrote five songs. We took the material and put it aside and moved on to Little Shop instead. Howard really wanted to do a musical based on a Damon Runyon story. The movie was Big Street which people know if they saw Being the Ricardos. It was that movie that Howard wanted to adapt and we couldn't get the rights at the time. I've worked on that a number of times since then, trying to figure out what Howard would have wanted to do.
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