In one particularly pivotal scene of the animated Disney musical “Frozen,” out Friday, Elsa — the icy queen of the fictional land of Arrendale — hikes up a snowy mountain. Voiced by Broadway performer Idina Menzel, Elsa has come to a crossroads in her personal journey, and she begins to sing, “The snow glows white on the mountain tonight/Not a footprint to be seen.” It’s a somber moment with a pretty little tune.
But it in no way prepares you for the magic that’s about to ensue.
One minute into the number, “Let It Go,” Menzel’s enchanting voice takes off and soars: “Let it go/Let it go/Can’t hold it back anymore.”
At a recent screening, the audience quite literally gasped. In just those few notes, you get the feeling you’re witnessing a classic in the making, something Disney hasn’t had in years. Something along the lines of “Part of Your World” from “The Little Mermaid” or “A Whole New World” from “Aladdin.” (Quick: Name a song from “The Princess and the Frog” or “Tangled.” Impossible.)
“I get chills thinking about it,” Menzel’s co-star Jonathan Groff told The Post earlier this year. “I think it’s going down in the books as one of those classic songs that kids will grow up singing [and] we’re going to hear the last 16 bars all over the audition rooms of New York.”
View videoTo create the songs for “Frozen,” which is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Snow Queen,” Disney brought in married couple Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. The two worked on the 2011 big-screen adaptation of “Winnie the Pooh” and the well-received stage version of “Finding Nemo” at Walt Disney World. More intriguingly, Robert is the wily genius behind the music of Broadway’s racy “Avenue Q” and “The Book of Mormon.”
One might suspect Disney would dial back the duo, but the songwriters say they had a lot of freedom.
“If you listen to ‘The First Time in Forever,’ for instance, Princess Anna (Elsa’s sister) is talking about being gassy. She’s talking about stuffing chocolate in her face,” says Kristen. “She’s not your [imitates a Snow White aria] ‘birds come’ kind of Disney princess. She’s a real girl. She wakes up with bed head.”
The House of Mouse did, however, draw the line at a song about foot fungus.
Kristen and Robert wrote some 30 songs that were eventually whittled down to eight. They worked closely with the film’s directors and actually played a large part in shaping the story. In fact, before the epic “Let It Go” — which has flavors of Menzel’s legendary “Wicked” number, “Defying Gravity” — was written, Elsa was the villain of the film. After hearing it, the directors reworked the plot to make her good.
“We wrote that song in a day, [then it felt] like the rest of the movie got written around that song,” says Kristen. “[Disney’s chief creative officer] John Lasseter was like, ‘Guys, I sing it in my car.’ ”
And the whole soundtrack is memorable — from the adorably heartbreaking “Do You Want to Build a Snowman,” in which Anna (Kristen Bell) begs her sister to come out and play, to the laugh-out-loud funny “In Summer,” sung by clueless snowman Olaf (Josh Gad).
Disney also rounded out the soundtrack with a cover of “Let It Go” by Demi Lovato, which plays during the film’s credits — and has an accompanying music video that has already racked up more than 6 million views on YouTube.
“[This is] one of the reasons why you want to write for Disney in the first place,” says Robert. “Because every Disney song has the potential to be a classic that’s remembered forever.”