"This is the Disney Songbook Table of Elements"

May 18, 2020 11:13 AM

"nobody:

me: in the history of disney animated movies there have been exactly 18 types of songs, and i'm going to tell you about each of them" (SLTwitterThread)

Justin McElroy, a municipal affairs reporter for CBC Vancouver, used his long weekend to categorize "every song over 30 seconds in an animated Disney theatrical film" — there are 252 if you're wondering — into categories like "This is the movie", "Things will be OK", "We should bone", and "Problematic".

He's also color-coded them by period in Disney's history, with a few outliers like "Weird Dumbo Songs" and "All of Winnie the Pooh". The full thread (linked above) gives his descriptions of each category and examples, culminating in the full songbook table of elements.

posted by brentajones (30 comments total)

Wow, for a hot second I thought this was that other Justin McElroy and got my wires crossed. Really fun post. Thanks for sharing!
posted by turtlebackriding at 11:26 AM on May 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

This was fun. I agree that every song in The Princess and the Frog is a 10/10. (Idk if he actually says that i'm just assuming what the table placement means.) No I don't take criticism
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:32 AM on May 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

As someone trapped in the house with a three year old and Disney+, I'm glad to see this, but a little disappointed that it doesn't have any of the live action movies coded. Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks are on pretty heavy rotation here (the latter is on at this very minute) and the patterns are similar. "Step in Time" might be the most "It's Dancing Time" song of any of them honestly.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:37 AM on May 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

spent the whole thread thinking it was this justin mcelroy who is also into disney and very much the sort of fellow i can imagine writing up something as extensive as this.
posted by lazaruslong at 11:40 AM on May 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

Also, I get his framework, but I think of "Arabian Nights," "Fathoms Below" and "Frozen Heart" as serving essentially the same function in their respective movies so it's odd to see them in three different places.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:44 AM on May 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Great idea, well argued, but this is not a periodic table of any sort. The periodic table encodes a huge amount of information and, most importantly, it's predictive. A periodic table of Disney songs should let us anticipate as-of-yet-undiscovered songs with a high degree of certainty.

Sorry for the griping; back to your regularly scheduled MetaFilter.

Also, MetaFilter: No I don't take criticism
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:44 AM on May 18, 2020 [25 favorites]

If you can't already anticipate Disney songs that haven't been composed yet, you haven't been pay attention across the decades.

Also, The Sherman Brothers were songwriting gods.
posted by hippybear at 11:59 AM on May 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

This was great. I wrote my undergrad "senior thesis" about how every Disney animated movie is about the same thing - main character wants to be able to make their own decisions and the other characters try to stop them. There is so much analysis you can do on these movies because they're so formulaic and there's so many of them. I feel like that could even be the primary value they provide, as a data set to teach people about identifying patterns and articulating them.

These scenes scared the living daylights out of me and I wonder if being told the animators were just having fun would have helped or not. My mom told me the theme song to x-files used a minor key to be scary on purpose because some people like that, but it didn't help at all.
posted by bleep at 12:06 PM on May 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have a question.

I’m thinking of a Disney song. It’s about the world, so does it count as Nature Time?

Anyway the song tells us, about the world, that it’s a world of laughter a world of tears
it’s a world of hopes and a world of fears
there’s so much that we share
that it’s time we’re aware
it’s a small world after all
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:07 PM on May 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Huffy Puffy: you are evil and must be destroyed. how DARE you plant that brainworm in everyone reading this thread?
posted by hippybear at 12:08 PM on May 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

what. the YouTube link is well under 20 minutes long
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:13 PM on May 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

One of my top five favorite karaoke songs (oh, this is a sector of entertainment that may never recover from the pandemic...) is an "I Want" song par excellence. "Part of Your World" from Little Mermaid. It even has the lyric "I want more!"
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:28 PM on May 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

Yeah, the other thing I was going to say is that “Part of Your World” is 100% a quarantine song.

“I wanna be where the people are”
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:37 PM on May 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

The Ashmen/Menken era of Disney songs was also songwriting gods at work, truly.
posted by hippybear at 12:40 PM on May 18, 2020 [7 favorites]

nobody: cares about your hot take
twitter: check out my hot take you guiiiiiiise
nobody: thinks this format is funny anymore
posted by J.K. Seazer at 12:54 PM on May 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

As part of our daily Disney movie work from home experiment, it's been fun watching what songs my daughter loves. The early golden age stuff mostly does not grab her, even though she seems to like the movies. Other than "Once Upon a Dream" I have not heard any of those songs being sung or had her ask for them to be added to the rotation. Like I said upthread, Mary Poppins has been the biggest hit; every time we clean she wants the soundtrack in its entirety, and even like the song Burt sings while he's doing the sidewalk art has become a song she sings to herself while she plays. The renaissance era stuff that's from my childhood is hit or miss; Little Mermaid is popular, Aladdin isn't, but that might have to do with her liking Ariel.

She liked Princess and the Frog, but didn't care about the songs. She went nuts for the Disney Robin Hood, but the only song she likes from it is "The Phony King of England." She LOVED "Mother Knows Best" from Tangled enough to turn it into a game where she wraps a sheet around her head and I have to pretend to climb it then sing the song to her; none of the other songs from that one really clicked though.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:04 PM on May 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

The periodic table encodes a huge amount of information and, most importantly, it's predictive. A periodic table of Disney songs should let us anticipate as-of-yet-undiscovered songs with a high degree of certainty.

Somewhere in the Forbidden Disney Archives: A Pinocchio/Jiminy Cricket 'We Should Bone' song.
posted by logicpunk at 1:15 PM on May 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

That is not predictive; that is wishful thinking.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:16 PM on May 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

me: in the history of disney animated movies there have been exactly 18 types of songs, and i'm going to tell you about each of them" (SLTwitterThread) [more inside]

posted by brentajones at 1:13 PM - 18 comments (18 new) +

I have now ruined this. You're welcome (a "Here's My Deal" song)
posted by Foosnark at 2:53 PM on May 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Huffy is quoting the ur-example for the “Stuck in the Ride for 45 Minutes While It Loops” category.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:05 PM on May 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Hey, hey, hey, no slagging off “it’s a small word” on my watch! It’s magic, dammit, magic! And it’s a quodlibet with “One Little Spark!” Figment, sweetie, FIGMENT!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:54 PM on May 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

it's the glitter of songs and glitter is the herpes of art supplies!
posted by hippybear at 5:03 PM on May 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

and i'm going to tell you about each of them

Oddly, this phrasing is mildly triggering to me because it's like something the host of a popular automotive YouTube series often says.
posted by ZeusHumms at 5:18 PM on May 18, 2020

"Step in Time" might be the most "It's Dancing Time" song of any of them honestly.

Okay, so does that make "The Life I Lead" Problematic or I Am the Villain?
posted by WizardOfDocs at 6:28 PM on May 18, 2020

I figured that one was Here's My Deal, although a case could be made for Problematic definitely. Mr. Banks (who my daughter calls "George" because that's what Mrs. Banks calls him) isn't the villain, that's Mr. Dawes, Sr., inasmuch as there is a villain, so I guess "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank" is your villain song.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:40 PM on May 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Previously on MeFi from the same Justin McElroy:

Canada’s Most Memorable (English) TV Thing: Round of 64

The 10 Best Canadian Heritage Minutes of All Time
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 7:57 PM on May 18, 2020

Glad as I am this is our Local McElroy (I like the McElroys but in less concentrated doses, and even hearing about all their new podcasts is close to a tipping point), Be Our Guest is entirely as much if not more a Here's Our Deal song as anything else, surely?
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:13 PM on May 18, 2020

Sorry for the griping; back to your regularly scheduled MetaFilter.

Yeah, this bit makes no sense.
posted by pompomtom at 5:20 AM on May 19, 2020

Okay, so does that make "The Life I Lead" Problematic or I Am the Villain?

I figured that one was Here's My Deal, although a case could be made for Problematic definitely. Mr. Banks (who my daughter calls "George" because that's what Mrs. Banks calls him) isn't the villain, that's Mr. Dawes, Sr., inasmuch as there is a villain, so I guess "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank" is your villain song.

It's weird to grow up and suddenly empathize with George Banks, who's just trying to do what he perceives to be the right thing by his family.

Anyway, George is definitely not the villain, because he is Redeemed. The later, sadder reprise of "The Life I Lead" is (IMO) the emotional climax of the movie and utterly wrecking, particularly the bit that is sung back to him by Bert:

You've got to grind, grind, grind
At that grindstone
Though childhood slips like sand through a sieve
And all too soon they've up grown
And then they've flown
And it's too late for you to give
Just that spoonful of sugar
To help the medicine go down
The medicine go down, the medicine go down.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 7:44 AM on May 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

I've observed before that Hakuna Matata and Let It Go serve basically the same function: They're the song where the central character decides to abandon everyone, which is a terrible mistake, but the song makes it sound really appealing. McElroy puts them in separate categories, however.
posted by baf at 10:55 AM on May 19, 2020