- - Alan Menken Breaks Down His Most Iconic Disney Animated Songs, from 'A Whole New World' to 'Colors of the Wind' (Exclusive)

Dave QuinnDecember 31, 2025 at 2:32 AM

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Alan Menken reflects on his five-decade career in a new video for PEOPLE, revisiting iconic Disney songs and sharing behind-the-scenes stories

He credits Howard Ashman for shaping Disney’s "I want" songs, like Ariel’s "Part of Your World" in The Little Mermaid

Menken reveals insights into creating classics like "A Whole New World" and songs that were cut, like "Proud of Your Boy"

Alan Menken is opening up his Disney animated songbook.

The legendary composer — who is one of the rare few to have achieved the illustrious EGOT, winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award — has written some of the most beloved music in the studio's history, including the scores to The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Tangled and more. And now, he's looking back on his work in a whole new way.

In a new video for PEOPLE filmed at his Upstate New York home, Menken reflects on more than five decades of songwriting, revisiting beloved tracks from his filmography while offering insight into how those songs came to life.

"Music has that ability just with a few notes to take you somewhere," Menken, 76, says in the video, reflecting on the simple joy that fuels his life’s work: the daily pull to sit at the piano and explore the possibilities of music. "Music has that shortcut."

Alan Menken

Menken began his career in the musical theater industry, working as an accompanist, club act musical director, arranger and contributor to revues (among other things) before finding success through collaborations with playwright Howard Ashman.

"I was a terrible student," Menken says. "I hated school. I couldn’t concentrate. I just wanted to do this."

Little Shop of Horrors, Menken and Ashman's 1982 Off-Broadway musical, would wind up being their biggest stage hit. It spawned showtune staples such as "Skid Row," "Suddenly Seymour" and "Somewhere That's Green." The musical earned the pair their first Oscar nomination, for a song from the 1986 film adaptation.

Gary Gershoff/Getty

Alan Menken in April 1990

On the strength of the success of Little Shop, Ashman and Menken were hired by Disney to write the music for The Little Mermaid. The film was anchored by "Part of Your World," a song Menken admits they jokingly called "Somewhere That's Dry" after its similarities to Little Shop's "Somewhere That's Green."

Sitting at the piano, Menken reflects on working on that song. He explains how the track is famously in the genre of what Ashman would call an "I want" song.

"It’s that moment when your protagonist says, ‘This is what I want in my life,' " Menken says, describing Ariel’s yearning to be part of the human world. "One of the gifts that Howard had so abundantly was to give a contemporary relatable voice to these classic characters. And Ariel was just a normal teenage girl who just wanted to be out of the ocean and lose her fins. It's just built into the the essence of the song, that innocence and that sense of I dream of this."

Disney

Ariel singing "Part of Your World" in The Little Mermaid

Dreaming was built into the essence of Menken's score, too. He shares how the music of the Little Mermaid was designed to feel like forward movement: “Every note is a reach upward to the surface," he says.

A similar technique was used with 1991's Beauty and the Beast. The title song, a lullaby sung by Mrs. Potts to her child Chip, was infused with a sense of time passing — "like a clock ticking."

The Little Mermaid would launch what would become a long-running collaboration with the studio that ushered in the Disney Renaissance, the period from roughly 1989 to 1999 when their animation films were revitalized through ambitious, song-driven storytelling.

Disney

Belle and the Beast dance during "Beauty and the Beast" in Beauty and the Beast

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But it would also be a time of heartbreak for Menken. After being diagnosed with AIDS, Ashman died at the age of 40 in March 14, 1991 — before the release of Beauty and the Beast, and prior to the completion of Aladdin.

"Those moments of writing these songs were so infused with both the beauty of the moment and the pain of the ephemeral nature of life," Menken recalls.

In the wake of Ashman's death, Menken teamed with lyricist Tim Rice to complete Aladdin. Together, they wrote "A Whole New World," one of the most lasting love ballads in the history of cinema.

The magic carpet duet wasn't exactly magic at first. Menken reveals that when he and Rice began mapping out the new songs needed to complete Aladdin, he initially gave Rice a placeholder lyric for the romance at the center of the film.

"I gave him a dummy lyric — 'The world at my feet,' " Menken says. "I thought, ‘Oh, the world at my feet. There’s a good one!' "

Rice, Menken recalls with a laugh, quickly pushed back on the phrasing. "In his wisdom, he thought maybe the word 'feet' is not best in the title of a love song," Menken laughs.

Disney Jasmine and Aladdin go on a magic carpet ride during "A Whole New World" in Aladdin

In his video with PEOPLE, Menken offers similar behind-the-scenes insights into other defining songs from the Disney Renaissance, including "Colors of the Wind" from 1995's Pocahontas and "Out There" from 1996's The Hunchback of Notre Dame — both of which he wrote with Stephen Schwartz.

Both songs give "such a lift to the whole project," he says.

He also opens up about songs that were cut along the way, including "Proud of Your Boy" from Aladdin — which was restored for the hit Broadway musical — and "Shooting Star," a song written for 1997's Hercules that was later replaced by "Go the Distance."

“Writing songs means making choices, that's just part of the process” Menken says. “You write a lot, you try things, and yes, you fall in love with ideas. But sometimes the right decision is to let a song go so the story can move forward. You have to listen to what the project needs. It's all part of the larger journey."

Alan Menken

Looking back, Menken says the through line across decades of hits — whether they made it into a final cut or not — has always been his devotion to the act of creation itself. Long before awards, accolades or legacy entered the picture, the joy came from the work: sitting at the piano, chasing ideas and letting collaboration shape the song into something unexpected.

"I love the process of writing songs. I love the process of collaborating," Menken says. "I think I'm a very boring person because every day all I want to do is just sit at the piano and just play with the possibilities of music."

"The thing you do every day is what you you should be doing with your life," he adds.

Watch the video above for the full insights from Menken.

on People

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”