Walking around Disneyland this past holiday weekend, my oldest girl observed to me that Disney has a lot of songs, and they play them all the time;. Yes, little one, you nailed it. I think most of the magic in these movies in the music, even more than the animation or story telling. But,l which song, truly, is the greatest Disney song OF ALL TIME? Let’s start a fight between grown-ass adults over princess ballads and resolve it like such adults are inclined to do: with a bracket battle. SOME RULES!
- All nominated songs that may participate in the bracket must be an original song in a feature film (so, no direct-to-video) released as a Disney-branded movie with Walt Disney Pictures as a production company. This includes Pixar’s entire catalog, (while Pixar wasn’t formally acquired until 2006, all the releases were made in collaboration with Walt Disney Pictures and were released with Disney branding along side Pixar’s), but not e.g. Marvel’s. Novel recordings of previously-written songs are ineligible. Songs from live-action movies are allowed, provided they are Disney-branded.
- We will be loose with voting eligibility. If you want to register some sock puppet accounts so that your partners and/or kids can cast their votes without registering here as full members, that is welcome and encouraged, but I think it’s best to keep the user names as something related to yours. You’ll just be on your honor as casting votes on behalf of a real person other than yourself. Let’s be grown-ass adults and not stuff the ballot box or do anything else outside the spirit of a fair bracket battle.
- All Academy Award Winning original songs are automatically IN and will be our top seeds, with their precise seeding determined arbitrarily by me (maybe some input from MrsWookie). I’m sure everyone here can name these off the top of their heads, but for completeness’s sake, they are, in chronological order:
- “When You Wish Upon a Star” – “Pinocchio” (1940)
- “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” – “Song of the South” (1947)
- “Chim Chim Cher-ee” – “Mary Poppins” (1964)
- “Under the Sea” – “The Little Mermaid” (1987)
- “Beauty and the Beast” – “Beauty and the Beast” (1991)
- “A Whole New World” – “Aladdin” (1992)
- “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” – “The Lion King” (1994)
- “Colors of the Wind” – “Pocahontas” (1995)
- “You’ll Be in My Heart” – “Tarzan” (1999)
- “If I Didn’t Have You” – “Monsters Inc.” (2001)
- “We Belong Together” – “Toy Story 3” (2010)
- “Man or Muppet” – “The Muppets” (2011)
- “Let It Go” – “Frozen” (2013)
- “Remember Me” – “Coco” (2017)
- When considering the impact a song from a movie has on you, it’s generally difficult to divorce feelings about how the song made you feel in the context of the movie, how the animation looked during the song, personal feelings of nostalgia, etc., so I won’t ask you to. Go ahead and consider all that. If a song is used multiple times within a movie, feel free to consider all or just your favorite renditions, as you will. However, this isn’t about ranking the overall movies – just the particular songs.
- There are no restrictions on the number of songs from a particular movie that may enter the bracket, and there will be no particular emphasis to seed songs from the same movie in either the same or different parts of the bracket as other songs from the same movie. If the final four end up being all songs from the same movie, the other movies should have tried having better songs.
- Please nominate, oh, let’s say for now, up to 10 distinct songs that are not already IN. Redundant nominations from different people will be used for seeding, and yes, nominations will be accepted from family and/or friends of members who wish to participate but not register here on behalf of that member. Nominations should include the song name and movie title. Depending on the nomination turnout, I may expand the amount of songs you may nominate (announced in thread), or we may have some play-in games so that we can settle on a final 64 (thus, redundant nominations are good for keeping your faves out of the play-in rounds even if we have an excess of 64 unique nominations when you may be making yours).
- When we get to the bracket, please, before voting, listen to both songs. Yes, every time.
Link to bracket, and the start of voting:
Round 2 underway starting here:
