While Disney has had massive success adapting its animated catalog into live-action features, that's not the only place the studio recreates success. They also have created some of the biggest Broadway shows in recent memory. Following shows like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, Frozen is the next Disney hit to grace the Broadway stage and the production has just dropped one of the brand new songs that has been added for the stage. Give a listen to "Monster."
The tweet sent out by Disney Music is only a small taste of the brand new song. However, it includes links to Spotify and Apple Music, where the complete song is available to for listening. "Monster" is sung by Elsa and appears to be set after Elsa and accidentally frozen her sister's heart. She's sitting in her ice castle wondering if she is truly a monster. Meanwhile, Hans is bringing a team up the mountain, they call for the return of summer as they march, to confront the queen. It's actually a fairly dark song, as Elsa seems to contemplate that she might need to kill herself, as it's the only way she can think of that will free the world of her power. She'd rather die than be a monster. One assumes that the arrival of Hans and company ends up putting a stop to these plans.
Clearly, the Broadway show is looking to make Frozen a bit of a more mature story. The original Frozen was a movie that any age could enjoy, but it's unlikely that Disney would have wanted an indication of suicide in its animated holiday movie. For whatever it's worth, the youngest kids who fell in love with Frozen in the theater are a bit older now, so when they insist their parents take them to the stage version, this hopefully won't be too much.
Broadway musicals tend to have many more songs than their big screen counterparts, so a few new songs were going to be needed to fill out the stage production. "Monster" is written by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the same songwriting team that created the music for the movie, this adds a very useful continuity of music.
The release of "Monster" comes with the official debut of Frozen on Broadway. The show is now playing in New York City following a run in Denver, Colorado, which was used a place to preview and polish the show. Will Frozen be as big a Broadway hit as The Lion King was? It's far to early to tell, but so far the music sounds pretty good. Though, it's difficult to imagine that "Monster" will become anywhere as popular as "Let it Go."
