Now that Moana 2 is officially available to stream with a Disney+ subscription, fans of all ages can officially put the movie on repeat as they have with the first Moana movie in the comfort of their homes. It was a huge success at the box office, earning the biggest global opening of all time for an animated movie, but a popular complaint among critics had to do with Barlow and Bear’s music in the shadow of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Moana original songs. So when I sat down with the composers of Moana 2, I had to ask the songwriting duo how they’ve handled themselves in the face of criticism.
I must say, Barlow and Bear had a solid take on the whole thing. Here’s what Abigail Barlow had to say when we talked at Walt Disney Animation for the Disney+ release press day:
I think it's important to like, go touch grass, you know? And like hang out with people who actually know you and know that this was two and a half years of such hard work. Emily was on the Renaissance tour and barely slept for half of these writing sessions that we were doing. So it was just a labor of love. And I think clinging onto that and just thinking about the positive of being a part of a legacy like Disney, I mean, it lives forever. And, if my nephews love it, that's all I care about.
Haters are going to hate, and the internet is going to the internet, but all the while the Moana 2 songwriters are focusing on what’s important to them. Abigail Barlow called writing the six tracks for the Moana 2 soundtrack a “labor of love” that she and Emily Bear put a lot of work into in between Bear being on the road with Beyoncé for the Renaissance tour (where she played the keys). Here’s what Bear added:
My thing is, if we reached a hundred people, if a hundred people really listen to these songs and it, and it meant something to them and they applied these things to their own life, then we've done our job.
Given "Can I Get A Chee-Hoo" on its own has been streamed on Spotify over 19 million times as of this article's publication, I think they have touched a lot more than a hundred people, don't you think?
By being part of the Moana 2 soundtrack, they became the first women and youngest composer duo in Disney history to write the music for an animated film for the studio. While there can be a lot of noise when you are in a movie that makes $1 billion dollars worldwide, the duo keeps themselves on solid ground by focusing on the people in front of them and the people who did connect with their work.
While there are a lot of people who have called the sequel “not as good as” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first movie, including in our own Moana 2 review, there’s also so many people who absolutely loved the movie and the work Barlow and Bear put into the songs. I know the soundtrack very much had a presence on my Spotify Wrapped for last year, between my deep love for “Beyond” and “Get Lost.” Check out their performance of the latter on YouTube:
In our previous interview with Barlow and Bear, the duo said they wrote three or four “full extra songs” for the movie in addition to what made it into the soundtrack, and “hundreds of different versions” before landing on what we see in the movie. It’s great to hear their responses to the criticism is so centered months after the initial release.
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