The Little Mermaid Features A New Alan Menken Song Titled 'For The First Time'

According to Empire, Rob Marshall's "The Little Mermaid" — a live-action/CGI remake of John Musker and Ron Clements' 1989 animated film of the same name — will feature a brand new song called "For the First Time," to be sung by the titular mermaid Ariel (Halle Bailey) as she makes her first sojourn onto dry land after being transformed into a human. It was co-penned by Disney legend and award-winning songwriter Alan Menken, the EGOT maestro who co-wrote the songs for the animated "Little Mermaid" movie with Howard Ashman, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Broadway superstar and songwriter behind the Disney-released animated films "Moana" and "Encanto."

Menken's return is a big deal. In 1990, he won two Academy Awards for "The Little Mermaid," taking home trophies for the film's score and for the song "Under the Sea" (for which Ashman was also awarded the Oscar). Menken and Ashman's ballad "Kiss the Girl" was also nominated that year. In 1992, Menken would walk home with two additional Academy Awards for his work on Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise's "Beauty and the Beast," again for his score as well as the film's titular song (which Ashman also won a posthumous Oscar for). Not through with the Disney Renaissance, Menken would repeat his Score/Song wins for "Aladdin" in 1993 and for "Pocahontas" in 1996.

Menken would continue to be Oscar-nominated for his many Disney-run projects after that, including "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "Hercules," "Enchanted," and "Tangled." His upbeat, hummable songs are part of the reason there was a Disney Renaissance at all.

Given their ongoing trend of adapting their canonical animated films into CGI and/or live-action — a trend that came into fashion starting with Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" in 2010 — Disney has asked Alan Menken to develop original songs for the 2017 remake of "Beauty and the Beast," as well as the 2019 version of "Aladdin." In both cases, the songs from the original animated films were merely ported over into the retelling, along with a few new songs to sweeten the pot and, perhaps cynically, search for Oscar consideration. The pattern will repeat with the 2023 version of "The Little Mermaid."

Speaking to Empire, Rob Marshall described Menken's "For the First Time" and its context:

"It's about [Ariel's] experiences the moment she hits land. [...] We needed to create a number that could almost work as a montage, so we could take her through that experience — coming onto the land, what it's like to put on shoes, have legs. [...] Anybody who has a different experience, it's wondrous and scary at the same time."

Disney's animated "Little Mermaid" film was based on the Danish fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, which itself was first published in 1837. In John Musker and Ron Clements' version of the story, the titular mermaid traded her ability to speak in order to be magically transformed into a human, as she had fallen in love with a young human prince. At the point Ariel walks onto the shore for the first time, she has no voice to sing. This invites speculation as to whether or not "For the First Time" will be presented as an internal monologue, very much the way Menken's "Speechless" was in the remake of "Aladdin."

Alan Menken started his career on the stage, first composing the music for a stage adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater." His first major off-Broadway hit came in 1982 when Menken helped adapt Roger Corman's notoriously cheap 1960 monster movie "Little Shop of Horrors" to stage. That musical would, in turn, be adapted to the big screen in 1986 in an impressive, effects-based movie directed by Frank Oz. Menken's song "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space" was nominated for an Oscar, but it lost to "Take My Breath Away" from "Top Gun."

In the late 1980s, Menken became involved with the Disney productions listed above, as well as a notorious live-action bomb called "Newsies" from 1992. While not successful, the songs were bright and catchy, and "Newsies" eventually garnered a sizable cult following. The film was even adapted for the stage, and made its Broadway debut in 2012. The stage version was nominated for eight Tony Awards. Also working for Disney, Menken composed the songs for "Home on the Range," the animated film about talking cows and an evil yodeling cattle rustler.

Despite his association with the squeaky-clean Disney, "Little Shop of Horrors" proved that Menken always had a bit of a wicked sense of humor, and he occasionally would be found writing naughty or tongue-in-cheek songs for films like "Captain America: The First Avenger" (he composed "Star-Spangled Man") and the incredibly sexual film "Sausage Party." Menken is currently working on a remake of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and a sequel to the live-action "Aladdin" film. At 73, he shows no signs of stopping.

Rob Marshall's "The Little Mermaid" opens in theaters on May 26, 2023.