In Defense of the Villain Song
A Look at Disney Villain Songs
Last week, CineNation published an article by my colleagues Daniel and Rachel, in which they took on the daunting task of ranking and rating pretty much the entirety of the Disney animated feature discography. It was a lot of work, and that should be appreciated. Any self-proclaimed Disney fan should give the article a read. They lay out their methodology and give their reasoning for how they rated the soundtracks. But take a few minutes, look it over, then come back here.
Read it? Notice a strange pattern in the ratings?
I’m not here to say, “GRR THEY ARE WRONG, MY LIST IS A TRUE FAN LIST” or anything. That would be boring, and I was not blessed with the patience to listen to the entirety of the Disney music collection. While I’ve seen most of the Disney animated films while writing my still incomplete Feminisney series, I don’t have the fullness of knowledge of the soundtracks or even plots of all the films.
My biggest quarrel with their list is the frequent disdain for the villain song, which I’m defining as a song sung by or about the villain(s) or antagonist(s) frequently used to reveal part of their inner monologue, plan, or overall psychology. Sometimes, it’s a specific disdain, i.e., calling out “Be Prepared” as mediocre.
Mediocre. …mediocre. A song by Jeremy Irons is never mediocre.
There are, to my count, 20 songs on the list that can qualify as villain songs. I won’t list them all, but beyond the obvious ones, here are a few:
- “Savages” from Pocahontas
- “Les Poissons” from The Little Mermaid
- “Shiny” from Moana
- “The Mob Song” from Beauty and the Beast
- “Pink Elephants on Parade” from Dumbo
- “Love Is an Open Door” from Frozen (Yes, I know this is a romantic duet, but, well, spoilers…)
Including those perhaps less obvious villain songs and the ratings given, the average villain song rating in their list is a 3.9, or just shy of “Enjoyable Enough.” Another way to say that would be…mediocre.
And maybe that’s the right rating. After all, not all songs are created equal. But I want to talk about the flaw in methodology and how I feel musicals should be given consideration even beyond Disney.
The criteria gives both a basic limitation and philosophy: First, only narrative films are present on the list. Second, the philosophy is “more good songs equals a better album” to explain total points being a tie-breaker consideration.
Well, if more good songs made a better album, the best Beatles album would be something like Hey Jude and not what is generally considered the best, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. And why does that album frequently get that title? Context. It was a groundbreaking album in many ways, including musical methods used. It had a fascinating thematic concept. It was influential. It cemented the turning point in the musical direction of one of the greatest pop-rock bands in history, one introduced in Rubber Soul. Yes, it had great songs, but if you compiled the list of their best hits, I suspect at most three songs from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band would make the list. The product as a whole is what matters, every song building on another to form one cohesive story.
So, why limit yourself to narrative films if the whole product, meaning the context, doesn’t matter?
For example, let’s look at Frozen, which was rated 16th out of the 35 films included. Maybe that’s where it belongs…maybe it could be lower. While some of the songs are good, I would argue Frozen’s biggest weakness as a soundtrack is how it ends on the comic relief song “Fixer Upper”, which came after a sidekick-driven comic relief song in “In Summer”. We are not given an emotional coda. I depart from a lot of people and think that “Frozen Heart” (Rated a 2) was a great opener, laying out the plot and providing great foreshadowing with a sound that stands out among the more pop-driven rest of the album, warning the audience that things might get dark. Which they do! And consider these lyrics:
Beautiful!
Powerful!
Dangerous!
Cold!
Ice has a magic, can’t be controlled
Stronger than one! Stronger than ten!
Stronger than a hundred men!
Those are some stellar foreshadowing lyrics. They tell you all about Elsa before you meet her. But, meanwhile, the music stops about two-thirds of the way through the film, and the audience is given zero emotional coda after two comedic songs (“In Summer” and “Fixer Upper”). Consider how much more powerful the film would have been if something like this fan-made song had been added, a reprise of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” sung by Elsa pouring out her regrets over her coldness and despairing her now lost sister. It’s a very, very short piece of music that would have killed from an emotional and narrative POV. And that is, to me, why Frozen falters, even if the songs are individually good.
So why the focus on the villain song?
Villain songs are not something concocted and used solely by Walt Disney Studios, of course. Into the Woods has “Hello, Little Girl,” Les Miserables has “Stars,” and 1943’s Oklahoma! has “Lonely Room”. One could even consider the famous Gilbert and Sullivan tune “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” from 1879’s Pirates of Penzance an antagonist’s song of sorts, and certainly the famous “Der Hölle Rache” or Queen of the Night Aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute could be considered a villain song under the right light (please don’t hurt me, opera purists). Even Shakespeare, while not generally writing musicals, liked to give antagonistic or villainous characters soliloquies from time to time, such as with Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger” or Brutus’ “It must be by his death”.
While not every story has a tangible, humanized villain with motives and direct antagonism, for the ones that do, getting to hear from that villain can take things from a two-dimensional, flat plot to a more fully-realized plot with fully-realized characters. Or even just make their dastardly plot more clear to the audience. “Poor Unfortunate Souls” gives a clear explanation of Ursula’s goal and how slimy and skeezy she can be. “Be Prepared” shows Scar’s disdain for the idiot hyenas he’s got working for him and shows his psychopathic desire to be king, no matter who he has to kill. My favorite song in all of Disney, “Hellfire,” takes Frollo’s racist creepy self and gives a full look into his psychology, the twisted religiosity of an egotistical, narcissistic horndog, showing how, in his mind, nothing is his fault, but rather God’s, and he is merely acting on God’s desires. Plus, the song uses Latin, and that’s just fun.
While the original list gave villain songs as a group an underwhelming score, I’m going to go ahead and guess that some of the most memorable songs for kids were the villain songs, like the three I mentioned above, or the fun and rousing “Gaston”. (I always liked Jafar’s brief little reprise of “Prince Ali” too, but that didn’t fit within the list’s criteria.) And beyond that era, “Friends on the Other Side” and “Mother Knows Best,” especially with its fascinating heel turn reprise, are newer classics. Musically, they can be rejections of earlier themes, like Aladdin’s “Prince Ali” reprise being repurposed from a boast of the protagonist to a victory lap for Jafar and the low point propelling the story into act three. For the story, they can flesh things out and give the audience a much-needed glimpse at the story from a different angle. And without these songs, a lot of these soundtracks would be narratively bland and confusing. Musically flat. Villain songs get to depart from the feel of the rest of the narrative, trying something new in the music. And sometimes, an album or soundtrack needs that, like “She’s Leaving Home” on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band skipping out on percussion and bringing in a string quartet. Maybe it’s not the most memorable song on the album, but it fits fantastically in the whole product.
When rating Disney soundtracks, or when rating any narrative musical’s soundtrack, the narrative story told by the music needs to be considered. Does the song push the plot? Does it reveal the characters to us? Or is it just a fun little karaoke number that we could do without? Or maybe it’s a well-needed reprieve from the way things have been musically.
This would also be why I disagree with the ultimate choice of Mulan as the winner in the LeVine list. Not to insult (four of) the five songs the movie has, which are incredibly fun, but there are narrative issues. Similar to Frozen, other than a very brief reprise of “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You” that wasn’t musically changed in any significant way other than only using the chorus, the music ends incredibly early, and on a comic relief song, without an emotional coda or look into our characters’ thoughts, be that in the form of a villain song fleshing out the forgettable Shan Yu or a reprise of “Reflection” exploring Mulan once again being thrown into a dark low despite destroying the enemy horde single-handedly. As a narrative, like Frozen, it feels incomplete, despite offering very good music.
You’re free to disagree. At least two people do. But let’s not be so quick to discard the humble villain song from our musical appreciations. Very often, they can be just what the musical needs to stand out above the rest. So this, stand up to your relatives or friends and let them know that villain songs deserve attention and respect.
Also, speaking of respect, let’s please give the appropriate amount (being a lot) to Vincent Price chewing the scenery as Professor Ratigan in “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind” from The Great Mouse Detective. That movie gets far less respect than it deserves, especially considering Vincent Price’s performance.
