Name: Disney Composer Alan Menken Breaks Down His Most Iconic Songs | PEOPLE
Uploaded: 2026-01-12T13:53:14.000Z
Duration: 11 min 21 s
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Maybe the word feet is not best in the title of a love song.

Music has that ability, just with a few notes to take you somewhere and you go, oh, music has that shortcut.

I'm Alan Menken, and I've been in musical theater and film composer for over 50 years.

My work includes the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Hercules, Tangle, and many, many more.

I'm going to walk you through some of the highlights from my songbook.

The Little Mermaid, Part of youf World, 1989.

I wrote the songs for the Little Mermaid with my brilliant collaborator, Howard Ashman.

Part of your world is obviously that genre of song that Howard Ashwood called the I want song.

When Howard and I first wrote Little Shop of Horrors, Somewhere that's Green clearly was the I want song.

It's that moment when your protagonist says, this is what I want in my life.

And this case it's Ariel in her grotto saying, I want to be in that world.

We jokingly called it Somewhere that's wet, but

really it's Somewhere that's dry is where I want to be.

What would I pay to spend a day warm on the sand?

Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?

Wouldn't you think I'm the girl, girl who has everything look at this trove Treasures.

Unto every note is a reach upward to the surface.

This sequence of notes is meant to capture the essence of moving water.

One of the gifts that Howard had so abundantly was to give a contemporary, relatable voice to these classic characters.

A normal teenage girl who just wanted to be out of the ocean and lose her fins.

It's just built into the essence of the song, that innocence and that sense of.

One tale as old as time, true as it can be.

Beauty and the beast followed in 1991, but

by that time, Howard Eshman already had a terminal AIDS diagnosis, but

he worked through illness during its creation.

Well, the essence of the song has a few essences in it.

One is that you have Mrs. Potts singing to Chip.

So it's a mother singing, like, a comforting lullaby to her son about the enduring power of love.

Howard passed away before he was able to see the final Beauty and the Beast feature.

Those moments of writing these songs were so infused with both the beauty of the moment and the pain of the ephemeral nature of life.

Aladdin Proud of youf Boy 1992 Proud of youo Boy was written for an early version of Aladdin when.

When Aladdin had his mother, not atypical for Disney animation, the mother was God.

And at the end, he's, you know, he's complaining about, well, since I wasn't born perfect like that, or you.

And a lot of people think, since I wasn't born perfect like that, I go, no, it's really supposed to be a kid shrugging and going, well, Mom, I wasn't born perfect like you, but

When it was decided that Aladdin was going to be adapted for the stage, I said, let's please get back in the songs that Howard and I wrote for the movie.

And everybody was totally in favor of that, and we made that work.

After Howard's passing in 1991, Disney asked me to team with lyricist Tim Rice in completing Aladdin.

I can show you the world Shining, shimmering, splendid.

We basically mapped out three new songs we were gonna write and prime among them was the Magic Carpet.

And Tim, in his wisdom, thought maybe the word feet is not best in the title of a love song.

So a whole new world, a new fantastic point of view.

Structurally, he's drawing a picture for her about where he's taking her, and

There is just that gut brain understanding of the emotional journey of a character, of a moment.

We're on this magic carpet ride and we know it's taking them to a point where they're coming together for you and me.

For Pocahontas, I collaborated with Stephen Schwartz, already a Broadway legend, years before he wrote Wicked.

Well, that was the first song Stephen Schwartz and I wrote together.

I think Stephen came in then with a You think youk own whatever land you land on have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?

I remember when we wrote it, there was a huge amount of excitement at Disney when you find that initial song.

It gives such a lift to the whole project to give that vocabulary.

Basically saying, that's the DNA we're going to build from the Hunchback of Notre dame out there.

Stephen Schwartz and I continued our partnership with Hunchback.

We were about to start Hunchback of Notre Dame.

So I just was at my house and I was just playing.

And Stephen listens to it and he goes, you know what that is?

That's Quasimodo's song out there living in the sun.

And that was one of the few times where a piece of news that came first without a dramatic inception.

And it was absolutely perfect for that moment.

We pushed the envelope on Hunchback Adventure.

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Disney Composer Alan Menken Breaks Down His Most Iconic Songs | PEOPLE

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