‘The Little Mermaid’ Made Me a Musical Hypocrite
Why ‘Part of Your World’ Is One of the Greatest Songs Ever Written
by Andrew Osenga
Andy Patton at the Rabbit Room emailed me a month or two ago and told me they were going to start a new Substack focused solely on music this year. I was excited to hear this news.
“Huzzah,” I said to myself, alone in my kitchen.
He invited me to contribute a few posts. I thought he might ask me to talk about Paul Simon or U2 or the Christian-mystic drunken Irish poet Van Morrison or some other Rabbit Room-y kind of thing, but, no…
He remembered a conversation we had a while ago where I went on a little tangent about one of my favorite songs of all time: “Part Of Your World”, from Disney’s The Little Mermaid soundtrack.
One thing you should know about me before we begin (hate me if you must):
I don’t like musicals.
I really don’t like songs from musicals.
I tend to find them unrelatable, because if you don’t know the story you won’t understand the song. Then it just seems like singing about getting from point A to point B, and that’s not a song, it’s just stage directions. And such dramatic directions . To my untrained ears, I just hear a lot of people singing way too hard for no reason, and they’re going to sing it right in my face and not break eye contact and they can cry on cue and does it have to be so awkward and please make it stop and why is the high hat so loud?
That’s how I feel about musicals.
(Unless my kids are in them, of course. Those are the best things ever.)
Clearly, I’m the dumb one here, as you and Julie Andrews and Wolverine (this one for laughs and this one for tears) and millions of others can’t all be wrong - they’re just not my thing.
EXCEPT…
The songs in The Little Mermaid.
What. Fantastic. Songs.
“Kiss the Girl.” “Under The Sea.” “Poor Unfortunate Souls.”
It’s the Joshua Tree of Disney soundtracks. And its “With or Without You” has got to be “Part Of Your World”.
The song was written by the dream team of lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken, who together wrote all the songs for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and most of Aladdin (until another lyricist was brought in to finish the work after Ashman died during the writing). Not only did Howard Ashman contribute fantastical, acrobatic, scene-stealing lyrics, but he became a huge part of the overall vision - speaking into the stories and casting - and was considered by many as the person most responsible for the “Disney Renaissance” of the early 1990’s.
“Kiss The Girl” and “Under The Sea” both got Grammy, Academy Award, and Golden Globe nominations (“Under The Sea” won all three), but to me, the Belle of the Ball is “Part Of Your World”. It’s not a flashy show-stopper like those other two, so it goes by a little unnoticed, but Ashman is doing some of his most brilliant lyrical work here.
To set the scene: It’s a coming-of-age story. There’s a young girl, feeling the teenage angst and urge to get out of her small town and go experience something new. In her thinking it’s to go live on land, but really, we’re about to learn, she knows almost nothing about that place. She’s naive and immature, yes, who isn’t at 15 0r 16 years old, but the yearning for adventure, romance, and freedom is so strong it feels it could burst out of her chest - and is about to lead her to do something fundamentally foolish.
The song captures all of that, within a dozen clever allusions to her under water life, and also packs in some unbelievable Inception-style “rhyme within a rhyme within a rhyme” moments that add heft and power towards an emotional crescendo.
It starts off with a banger of a hook…
Look at this stuff
Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm the girl
The girl who has everything?
Oh yeah, she’s a rich girl, too. She’s got everything, but it’s not enough. Great way to set up a picture of longing.
Look at this trove
Treasures untold
How many wonders can one cavern hold?
Looking around here you'd think
Sure, she's got everything
Just count the number of internal rhymes in that stanza. Trove, told, hold - wonders, one - and a couple more if you look more closely…
I've got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty
I've got whozits and whatzits galore
You want thingamabobs?
I've got twenty!
But who cares?
No big deal
I want more
Here’s she’s holding simple human things like forks and cups, but she doesn’t know what they are. This world she’s longing for, isn’t something real to her. He’s making this point to children watching the movie, that they won’t understand, either, in a way that it might get through to them. Hiding behind the silly made-up words is this heavy concept: What she wants is not what she thinks she wants!
I wanna be where the people are
I wanna see, wanna see 'em dancin'
Walking around on those, what do you call 'em?
Oh, feet
Flippin' your fins, you don't get too far
Legs are required for jumping, dancing
Strolling along down a, what's that word again?
Street
I LOVE how he plays with her ignorance about what she’s willing to throw her whole life away for, and ties it in with her longing to be free. It’s genius.
Up where they walk, up where they run
Up where they stay all day in the sun
Wanderin' free, wish I could be
Part of that world
Ok, pay attention. We’ve been in Class 1 Rhyme Scheme Waters so far. We’re about to swim down deeper. Watch what he’s about to do with the “and” & “aughters” sounds—and how each additional rhyme adds to the emotional weight, serving as an underline or a bold as the repetitions stack up.
What would I give if I could live out of these waters?
What would I pay to spend a day warm on the sand?
Bet'cha on land they understand
Bet they don't reprimand their daughters
Bright young women, sick of swimmin'
Ready to stand
Waters / daughters - Women / swimmin’. - Land / understand / reprimand / stand - Not only is that an incredible amount of rhymes packed in there, but look, each one of those words is powerful in this story, so each rhyme lands an emotional punch. IT’S TOO GOOOD!!!! Then he gives us one more “and” rhyme (six in total) into the next stanza…
Aaaand…. ready to know what the people know
Ask 'em my questions and get some answers
What's a fire and why does it, what's the word?
Burn?
She doesn’t know what fire is, because she’s never been above the water, but she has a burning within her that she doesn’t understand: “Why does it - what’s the word - burn?” Sheesh. Notice he finally breaks the rhyming to get serious: Ask questions and get answers. No more playing around. This is real. Get ready for the most important question and some more big emotional rhymes:
When's it my turn?
Wouldn't I love, love to explore that shore up above?
Out of the sea
Wish I could be
Part of that world
It’s a masterpiece.
Allan Menken’s score, with its epic, sweeping melodies are just as fantastic as the lyric. Flippant and casual at first, then soaring and desperate by the end.
I remember an old publisher telling me years ago: “Listeners don’t care how hard you worked on a song, they care how they feel when they hear it.” A song with this complexity and intentionality would take me months to write, if I even could (which I doubt) but it rolls out effortlessly when you sing it. True mastery of the craft.
Reading about Howard Ashman’s life, you can’t help but assume he put a lot of his story into this song. Growing up as a gay man in the 1960’s, who then lived in, and ultimately lost his life to, the AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s, it’s not hard to picture him imagining another, better life, somewhere else out there.
In the end, that’s what makes this song so powerful. Not just the clever wordplay, thoughtful character study or powerful melodies—it’s how all of those connect to a longing we recognize within ourselves: A deep yearning to get away from our problems, our past, and stale routines. To experience a deeper, richer life—where not just the landscape is new, but us, as well; finally becoming the people we dreamed we might be.
I love this song so much. I feel every inch of it, and I love that it points me to deeper truths of the human experience that overlap with the Gospel in simple, beautiful, and honest ways - even if Howard Ashman never meant to do so.
Or maybe he couldn't find the words for all his longings, either.
Postscript
As further proof that I am not that smart and people who like musicals are: I was recently working with Melanie Penn and Ben Shive and they just randomly did this.
Unplanned. No rehearsal. “Anyone Can Whistle” by Stephen Sondheim, which of course, I’d never even heard of before. I can admit when I’m wrong.
Andrew Osenga is a singer-songwriter and musician. He also writes, produces, engineers and plays guitar for other artists.
Read more from Andrew on his Substack.
For more resources on art and faith, sign up for our other newsletters: Poetry, Music, and Articles.
To support the work of the Rabbit Room, join us by becoming a member. Your membership helps fund everything from publishing new books to new podcasts, events, poetry, articles, theatre productions, conferences, and more. Membership is vital to our flourishing, and we’d love for you to participate. Click here to join or learn more.