The Little Mermaid 's new songs first listen: Hear snippets of Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda's music
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Alan Menken, the celebrated film composer of the original The Little Mermaid, remembers the first time he heard about Lin-Manuel Miranda — when Broadway's future Hamilton creator was a fourth grader at Hunter College Elementary in New York City.
"It's just one of those bizarre things where there was this little boy named Lin-Manuel Miranda who went to Hunter School with my niece," Menken recounts to EW for our Little Mermaid cover story. "It's so stuck in my head because I've never seen anyone so intentionally interested in a project [of mine]. My sister would tell me all about this little boy and 'he loves the project' and 'he wants to know this' and 'will you sign that?'"
"The takeaway from this story was, I was the most extra little fourth grader at Hunter Elementary School," Miranda says in conversation with Menken. "I begged your niece for an autograph."
Years later, after Menken says he witnessed "the birth of a genius" with Miranda's ascent in the theater space, the pair teamed up to write new songs for The Little Mermaid, Disney's live-action/CG reimagining starring Grammy-nominated Halle Bailey as Ariel. With Menken composing the music and Miranda writing the lyrics, the duo breaks down the three new tunes coming to theaters when the film opens May 26.
"For the First Time"
Giles Keyte/Disney Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric and Halle Bailey as Ariel in 'The Little Mermaid'
The first song Menken and Miranda tackled for the new movie was "For the First Time," an additional piece for Ariel. It was based on a melody Menken composed for the 1989 animated Little Mermaid, when Ariel and Prince Eric are touring his kingdom. Menken describes it as "lilting."
Miranda suggested he slow down the tempo and throw on a dancehall beat. "It just gives it this kind of Caribbean island vibe that we were already headed towards," Miranda says. "And then I just immediately gave you some dummy lyrics, but it really took both of us just throwing something down on the paper [and] looking at it together."
The pair tease a bit of the song on the piano, as shown in the exclusive video above. Menken says the musical sequence involves multiple stops as Ariel adjusts to life on land.
"All the clues for what that song could be are actually laid in 'Part of Your World,' which is one of the greatest 'I want' songs of all time that Alan wrote with Howard Ashman," Miranda continues. "She's wondering all these things about what life on land is. One of my favorite lyrics of all time: 'What's a fire and why does it... what's the word? Burn?' We thought [about] the opportunity to actually see her come face to face with the realities of life on land with (1) gravity, (2) fire, (3) clothes, (4) how people on land regard sea creatures, (5) meeting this man that she has had been in love with."
"I couldn't believe that [Ariel] only sang 'Part of Your World' in the original, as well as the Reprise. but it's cool 'cause she's singing more throughout this version," Bailey teases. "I think audiences can expect the new music from this film to be very upbeat, very fun, very lighthearted, as well as very emotional."
"Wild Uncharted Waters"
Giles Keyte/Disney Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric in 'The Little Mermaid'
Jonah Hauer-King, the 27-year-old British actor who plays Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid, gets his own musical number: a power ballad called "Wild Uncharted Waters." It's the song Miranda says he was most intimidated by because it felt like it lived more in the Menken-Ashman wheelhouse than his own.
"All you want to do as a lyricist is earn it and earn your keep inside it," Miranda says.
Director Rob Marshall, producer John DeLuca, and screenwriter David Magee wanted Eric to feel more like a three-dimensional character in their rendition of The Little Mermaid, compared to how he comes across in the animated film. "Wild Uncharted Waters" was one way to explore more of these layers.
"We took our cues from David's script. What he's done with Eric is made him an explorer," Miranda explains. "So, in a lot of ways, he and Ariel have the same restless spirit, but they're just from two different biomes. He wants to see the other edge of that horizon line wherever it may lead him. He's endlessly drawn to the sea and [Ariel's] endlessly drawn to land. So where does that get us?"
The song comes after Ariel carries an unconscious Eric to shore after his ship crashes and sinks during a storm. He doesn't yet know she's a mermaid. He just knows some mystery woman saved his life, and he yearns to find her.
Hauer-King feels audiences will understand Eric more fully from this song. What he wants, the actor says, is "to be his own person and to have his own identity and not just be weighed down by the expectation of being the future king and what his family wants from him," he says.
"Scuttlebutt"
Giles Keyte/Disney Daveed Diggs, who voices Sebastian in 'The Little Mermaid,' records the song "Scuttlebutt" with the film's lyricist (and his former 'Hamilton' costar) Lin-Manuel Miranda
If the title didn't already tip you off, "Scuttlebutt" was inspired by the seagull Scuttle, voiced by Awkwafina. Daveed Diggs, Miranda's former Hamilton costar, voices the crab Sebastian, who also features on this number.
"What I love about Scuttle is, Scuttle will start the sentence this way and goes like..." Miranda starts to say before making zig-zags with his hands. "There are gonna be digressions, but Scuttle's gonna get where Scuttle's gonna get."
"It's so in Lin's wheelhouse," Menken mentions. "If anybody asked me to now perform it, I would have to transform myself just to speak that fast."
According to Miranda, there aren't many melodic patterns to this song, because "there's no patterning in that brain of Scuttle's." Menken calls "Scuttlebutt" a work of "accidental art." He gave Miranda a Caribbean-style melody, which the lyricist then chopped up into his favorite bits, put those in order, and wrote lyrics based on that tune.
It further evolved as Menken and Miranda worked with the actors. "When we were in the studio with Awkwafina and Daveed, we were like, 'Well, we could do like a crazy double-time thing right here at the end because they can do that,'" Miranda recalls thinking. "It would just be an extra little button, a little extra icing on the cake. So I was like, 'Let me think of some things that they could rap really fast.'"
"It's the most deliciously ADHD runaway train of thought," Miranda adds. "There's tangents inside of tangents."
Read more about The Little Mermaid in EW's cover story with Marshall and his cast. The film opens in theaters May 26.
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