ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear just catapulted onto the biggest platform of their lives.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MOANA 2")
AULI'I CRAVALHO: (As Moana, singing) What lies beyond, under skies I've never seen? Will I lose myself between my home and what's unknown?
SHAPIRO: That is from "Moana 2," which made history this week as the biggest global box office debut for an animated movie. And the songwriters themselves made history, too. Not only are they the youngest composers for a Disney animated film. They're also the first all-female songwriting team to lead an animated Disney movie. Emily Bear and Abigail Barlow, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, and congratulations on this massive success.
ABIGAIL BARLOW: Thank you so much.
EMILY BEAR: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: Before this, you were best known for your original tunes on TikTok, which won you we Grammy. And on social media, you can kind of do your own thing. But Disney is a big machine where lots of people have lots of opinions. So can you tell us about writing within that structure with all of its layers and its hierarchy?
BEAR: Yeah.
BARLOW: Yeah, I mean, it's wildly collaborative, which is part of the fun and the magic of it all. And, like any collaboration, you have to learn where to push and pull and where to die on a hill and where not to die on a hill.
SHAPIRO: Did any of these songs have lots of different iterations before you settled on the version that we hear in the movie?
BEAR: Oh, yes. The hardest song to write was "Can I Get A Chee Hoo?," which is Dwayne "The Rock's" song.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MOANA 2")
DWAYNE JOHNSON: (As Maui, singing) Who are you? Who are you? Who are you going to be? You're going to, you're going to make some history. Come on, Moana. Go get your destiny. Can I get a, can I get a chee hoo?
BEAR: As the story evolved and as it turned into a film, it needed to be a different song. Maui's audience was now only Moana, and so it became a completely new thing, and we had to rewrite it probably 50 times.
BARLOW: There are some songs that stayed the same. The one that didn't really change much was "Get Lost."
SHAPIRO: This is, like, the classic villain song, villainous with a little asterisk next to it.
BEAR: Yes, as villainous as a big sister type role could be.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MOANA 2")
AWHIMAI FRASER: (As Matangi) I know you're scared, but life's unfair. It's full of choices big and small, but trust the fall, and you can have it all.
BEAR: I think the big part of it was she's a new character, so we got to kind of craft a new sound. That was really fun because we got to get a little outside of our own heads and just have fun with it. We knew that the character was kind of a diva and loved to put on a show. And so we all wanted to give her a show-stopping number.
BARLOW: And fun fact - Emily was on the Renaissance tour with Beyonce at the time we were writing this song.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MOANA 2")
FRASER: (As Matangi, singing) No explanation to solve this equation.
BARLOW: So I can only imagine that a little bit of that was influenced.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MOANA 2")
FRASER: (As Matangi, singing) We got to get lost, cut loose and lose our way. There ain't no fun in holding back, babe. You got to enjoy the thrill of living dangerously. You got a long, long way to go. Keep playing safe. You'll never know the rules are ours to break. What do you say?
SHAPIRO: This particular movie is also set in a specific culture of Polynesia. The music weaves in a lot of those influences, from drumming to singing. What kind of education did you get in that culture and history to write this stuff?
BARLOW: I mean, Disney cares so much and treats the culture with such respect, which ultimately we ended up doing as well. From the very first day, they handed us, like, a Moana bible of, like, eight years of research. They gave us access to the Oceanic Cultural Trust, and we got to speak to real-life wayfinders...
SHAPIRO: Whoa, amazing.
BARLOW: ...Who said things that, like, inspired "Get Lost." They said getting lost is the pathway to finding magic. And that - everybody was like, write that down. That's a song.
SHAPIRO: That's incredible.
BARLOW: And we also listened to a lot of Polynesian and Pacific music because when you listen to it, you know, you start to pick up on patterns and chord progressions, and, you know, you sort of can infuse that and inject it into your own music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE'RE BACK (TE VAKA VERSION)")
OLIVIA FOA'I: (Singing in Tokelauan).
SHAPIRO: Did you have sort of, like, a mentor in that culture who you would go to and say, does this orchestration sound right? Does this chord progression sound authentic?
BEAR: Well, we had a few different people that we could go to, including Opetaia Foa'i, who was such a huge part of building the first soundtrack. And it's his world.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FINDING THE WAY")
TE VAKA: (Singing in Tokelauan).
BEAR: The things that him and his group Te Vaka added brought the music to life in a whole different way.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FINDING THE WAY")
TE VAKA: (Singing in Tokelauan).
SHAPIRO: All right. I have heard it said that comparison is violence. But when you were following Lin Manuel Miranda, who wrote music for the first "Moana," you have to have some awareness that those are the footsteps you're following in, right? So did you try to write songs that ignored the first movie or were in conversation with those tunes, or how did you think about that?
BARLOW: Well, it is a sequel. So we wanted it to have, you know, the same lush, epic sounds of the first film because we know and we love it. There's a reason it's so beloved.
BEAR: Sequels are always hard. There are certain things that we have to keep. For example, like, Dwyane and Maui - they have a very specific sound. You know, rapping is a part of his style. It's a part of his character. So we had to keep that through.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CAN I GET A CHEE HOO?")
JOHNSON: (Rapping) Here's the deal. That bullying storm god skips leg day for real. Can you imagine the legend this epic voyage reveals? You think that it's doomsday. To me, it's just Tuesday. You know I don't come to play, come to play.
BEAR: But also, we wanted to allow, like, the tone of his character to evolve. We wanted the sound to get bigger. I think we sort of angered the movie at the very beginning in the sounds of "Moana 1." That opening number is, like, the most of the world?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TULOU TAGALOA (SEI E VA'AI MAI)")
FOA'I: (Singing in Tokelauan).
BEAR: And you don't want to be redundant, but you do want it to sound familiar, so we wanted to put some callbacks in there.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TULOU TAGALOA (SEI E VA'AI MAI)")
TE VAKA: (Singing in Tokelauan).
BEAR: And then as she started - like, goes into these new waters, meets new characters, everything grows, including Moana's voice because she's 19 now. And the way you're going to carry yourself and the way that you view the world is going to be so different. So we wanted that to be reflected in the lyrics.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MOANA 2")
CRAVALHO: (As Moana, singing) Returning to tell our story, connected with both the land and sea. Finally we're back to who we're meant to be, who I'm meant to be.
SHAPIRO: When I was sitting in the movie, I started going through other Disney musicals in my head and thought, wait. Are they the first team of women to write the soundtrack to Disney film without a male collaborator? And then I thought, no, that couldn't possibly be. And it turns out it is. When did you realize you were making history in that way?
BARLOW: Well, it was just sort of a thing that our agent said to us. Like, as we were working on it the first couple months, they're like, did you know? And, like, you know, you never expect to be part of, like, a stat like that. I mean, it's crazy that it's happening in 2024. You feel like it should have happened before now.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
BARLOW: But, I mean, we're honored and grateful, and, like, if this opens up a little girl's eyes to this particular career path and she says, I can do this, then, like, we've done our job.
BEAR: I co-sign.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MOANA 2")
CRAVALHO: (As Moana, singing) What lies beyond, on the vast, uncharted sea. Will I lose myself between all that we know right here...
SHAPIRO: Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear. They are the songwriters behind "Moana 2," which is in theaters now. It's been so good talking to you. Thank you.
BARLOW: Thank you, Ari.
BEAR: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MOANA 2")
CRAVALHO: (As Moana, singing) ...What lies beyond. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
