Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Little Mermaid.
Dinsey’s The Little Mermaid recreated the magical underwater world of Atlantica’s collision with the human world in the 2023 live-action adaptation. The film not only kept most of the songs from the original late 80s animated film, but it also included new ones that were co-written by Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda.
So how many new songs did Disney include in its live-action adaptation? Do they add more to the film or was it just there for the sake of adding new music in this live-action recreation? And were these songs worth swapping tracks from the original soundtrack that didn’t make the cut in the 2023 rendition?
How many new songs are in ‘The Little Mermaid’ remake?
The 2023 version of The Little Mermaid included three new songs in its soundtrack, along with the most of the original soundtrack. Two of these songs were sung by two of the film’s characters who originally didn’t have singing roles, and one was a solo by Halle Bailey‘s Ariel.
The first song that was added to the film is titled ‘Wild Uncharted Waters,’ performed by Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King). This princely solo is about his search for the “mysterious girl” who saved him. In the song, he referenced the girl’s voice like it was a siren. Little did he know that Ariel used her siren song to revive the prince she saved from a storm.
The second song is titled ‘For the First Time,’ and no, this is not a reference to Frozen. The song is about Ariel’s excitement to be in the human world for the first time while she is still getting used to her legs. In the film, the song was sung in her head since she can’t speak due to her deal with Ursula. The song is pretty much Ariel’s first impressions of the “above world” such as her encounter with fire, her sadness when she learned that fish are just seen as food, and how weird human clothes are.
The last new song is a rap titled ‘The Scuttlebutt,’ performed by Awkwafina, who plays Scuttle the Seagul, and Daveed Diggs‘ Sebastian. The song improves on the original scene when Scuttle wakes Ariel up on the third day, congratulating her for her engagement with Prince Eric when it’s later revealed that it was Vanessa he was engaged to. In the song, rather than it being Scuttle congratulating Ariel, it was a song about the latest news of Prince Eric’s plan to propose. And just like in the film, Ariel thought the girl Scuttle was referring to was her when it turned out to be someone else.
These new songs added more to the film’s storytelling as well as giving more character depth and emotion to the ones that sing them. We learn more about Prince Eric during his ballad, Ariel’s excitement as a human, and an interesting dynamic between Scuttle and Sebastian. If you want to listen to these songs, they’re all now available to stream.
The Little Mermaid will hit theaters on May 26, 2023.
