When you ask “The Little Mermaid” star Halle Bailey about which moment from Disney’s new live-action adaptation of the animated classic made her marvel the most, her answer isn’t donning Ariel’s fins for the first time (despite practicing to be a mermaid since she was a kid) or belting the ballad “Part of Your World.”
Instead, she lists her castmates’ musical numbers: “Jonah [Hauer-King, who plays Prince Eric, his] song is wonderful — ‘Wild Uncharted Waters’ — his performance of that is iconic. And then ‘The Scuttlebutt’ is amazing. That’s another one of my favorites,” Bailey tells Variety, reflecting on the first time she watched the movie. “Going on the musical journey of the film makes me so happy to watch again and again.”
Along with fresh updates to classics like “Part of Your World,” “Kiss the Girl” and “Under the Sea,” the live-action film features three original tracks, with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda. (“For the First Time,” sung by Bailey, is the third, plus theres a solo from Javier Bardem’s King Triton which didn’t make the final cut.)
Menken dives back under the sea for the live-action version after composing the score for the 1989 animated classic, on which he worked alongside the late Howard Ashman as that movie’s lyricist. In 1990, the legendary duo accepted the Academy Award for best original song for “Under the Sea,” while Menken picked up a solo trophy for the film’s score. (“Kiss the Girl” was also nominated for an Oscar.)
“Revisiting this with Rob Marshall as a director is such a blessing. He’s the best of the best. He knew exactly what he wanted, so that was incredible,” Menken tells Variety of returning for Disney’s live-action version. “And working with a new collaborator, with Lin-Manuel Miranda as my lyricist, that was so much fun.”
As Menken and Miranda’s new songs offer insight into Ariel, Prince Eric and more beloved characters, Variety dives into each track with the help of Bailey, Menken, Marshall and the film’s cast.
"Part of Your World"
Image Credit: DISNEY It’s been well-reported that Ariel’s iconic ballad served as Bailey’s audition number, with her performance reducing Marshall to a puddle of tears. (As he tells it, Bailey was the first person to audition for the part and she claimed the role at that moment.)
“We saw hundreds of girls and she had set the bar so high, and no one ever surpassed that bar. People came close but no one surpassed that bar,” Marshall tells Variety. “We only screen tested her, and it was just perfectly clear. I didnt have to make a choice. It was made.”
Fitting, since Bailey had been practicing for the part since she fell in love with the animated version as a child. Growing up, she wore out her family’s VHS tape watching and rewatching the movie and pretending to swim like Ariel every time she hopped in the pool.
“That song truly means so much to me,” Bailey told Variety for her Aug. 2022 cover story, explaining that it was the mermaid’s sense of longing and desire to find herself that she resonated with most. “She knew where she wanted to go, and she wasn’t going to let anybody stop her.”
In the animated version, Bailey explained at the time, “Its easy to just be like, ‘Oh yeah, she was in love and she wanted to be with the boy,’ but if you listen to the words of that song, its a desperate plea, its a cry for help. I get emotional about it because she is so passionate about what she wants, and where she wants to go in life.”
Bailey infused that yearning into the vocals for her rendition of the song, putting a wrenching spin on the tune by singing parts of the song up an octave from the original.
The excitement Marshall felt during her audition returned when she delivered the reprise of “Part of Your World,” in a scene made memorable in the animated film when a wave crashes up behind the mermaid, framing her with ocean spray. “It’s the most chilling, and the most thrilling, film moment because it crystallizes not just her incredible vocal ability but the emotional passion she has in singing it,” Marshall says.
“For the First Time”
Image Credit: Giles Keyte Audiences hear what Baileys Ariel is thinking as she gets acclimated to the human world, with music that riffs on Menken’s score for the 1989 animated movie.
The new track was born out of Marshall’s realization that Ariel has just one song in that movie. “I thought, ‘That doesnt make sense. Shes the lead of this musical,’” he says.
So, the filmmakers (Marshall, producer John De Luca, screenwriter David McGee, Menken and Miranda) searched for somewhere in the story to insert another solo and decided Ariel’s first moments on land presented the perfect opportunity.
“I like songs that you can use as a montage, that take you through a lot of story, so you can combine it all into one big number,” Marshall says. Thus, For the First Time charts Ariel’s first experiences until she is presented before Prince Eric. “[The song shows] her disappointment following the heartbreak that he doesnt recognize who she is.”
“I gave Lin a lilting piece of music that’s a variation of what was in the original underscore of the original animated [movie],” notes Menken. The lyric that cracked that song is its title: “’For the first time,’ is the cornerstone of it. It’s all a new beginning, and at the end of it, it’s kind of a scary new beginning for her.”
It was “thrilling” to develop the new number. But the tricky part, Marshall notes, is that at this point of the story Ariel no longer has her voice. (She’s traded her tail and her siren song to Ursula for legs and the opportunity to walk on land.)
To portray the voiceless mermaid’s inner monologue, Marshall had Bailey watch “Yentl,” Barbra Streisand’s 1983 musical drama.“That was a beautiful studying moment, because I could watch how the power of song can still translate through your face,” Bailey says.
“Wild Uncharted Waters”
Image Credit: Giles Keyte There’s more to Hauer-Kings Prince Eric than just a pretty face, or his love story with Ariel — he gets his own number too, a ‘90s-era power ballad that illuminates the young royal’s desire to find himself at sea.
The new song underlines the idea that “The Little Mermaid” is “a love story about the land and sea coming together,” Menken says, playing the melody as he describes the tune. “It starts with this roiling of emotion. He’s trying to keep it under, but he’s just bursting as the music builds.”
Hauer-King learned about the number during the audition process. “[It] felt like an exciting moment, because, at that point, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m getting closer now. They’re trusting me with the sheet music,’” he recalls.
“We really get to know him better through that song: we understand that hes restless. … Hes longing for adventure,” Hauer-King explains. “Hes longing for this girl whos out there. Hes grateful that she saved him, but this girl also represents something more. Its about being away from the castle. It’s about looking outwards.”
“The Scuttlebutt”
Image Credit: DISNEY “Sebastian has two songs, but where’s Scuttle’s?” Marshall says the filmmakers realized when crafting the adaptation. DeLuca came up with the title, playing off the slang word for “gossip,” which Scuttle (Awkwafina) excels at – sort of.
“She’s so befuddled and never gets the words together, so a fun thought was like let’s make it a crazy rap,” Marshall says, explaining that “The Scuttlebutt” is another montage song used to explain the gossip around Prince Eric’s decision to propose.
So, Menken composed a Caribbean-inspired tune and Miranda wrote the rhymes, which culminate in a back-and-forth speed rap between Scuttle and Sebastian (Daveed Diggs). “It was just, ‘Oh my god. That was so delicious,’” Menken recalls. “But then, Awkwafina and Daveed Diggs singing it, it was like, ‘Oh man, this is special.’”
Finding out that Scuttle was going to get her own number was a particularly pleasant surprise for Awkwafina, since she’s a huge fan of Miranda.
“It was so cool to perform a song that he wrote for the character. It’s an honor,” Awkwafina says. “Its like ‘Are you sure even want to do this?” But then I was like, ‘At the end of the day, if it doesnt work, youre don’t have to use it.’”
The decision to add Diggs’ vocals came later, with the Tony-winner admitting that he was a fan of Awkwafina’s from her earlier rap music beginnings. “I might have requested to do hype vocals,” Diggs adds.
About reuniting with his “Hamilton” creator and co-star Miranda, Diggs says, their familiarity paid dividends during recording. “His speech patterns are so familiar to me,” Diggs explains. “Rap music, for people who don’t make rap music, feels like a magic trick. But it’s just like anything else.”
“Impossible Child”
Image Credit: DISNEY King Triton (Javier Bardem) delivers a solo about the difficult father-daughter relationship between him and Ariel. It landed on the cutting room floor but will appear on a special edition release of the film.
“The emotional journey that he does at the end would have been given away a little bit if the song was placed [where it was], so it makes sense,” Bardem says of Marshall’s decision to remove the scene.
“Im excited for people to hear how amazing he sounds in it. But it didn’t play.” Marshall concurs, explaining why the decision to nix the scene came so late in the game. “What you realize as youre working on a new piece, the movie tells you what it needs.”
He continues: “We were learning too much about what Triton was feeling about losing Ariel and it hurt the ending. You need to wait for that cathartic moment till the end, and it delivered it too early.”