 Before we get started, I just wanted to remind you all that there's polyphonic merch available at dftba.com. If you've ever wanted a polyphonic video on your wall, this is the way to do it. I've got posters I made that I'm really proud of, so please just go check it out, show some love, and support the channel. Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy the video. Entire generations have been raised on Disney musicals. Before finding their first band, buying their first album, or becoming part of their first movement, many kids found their first favorite songs in Disney movies, and for lots of people that love has stuck around. Time and time again, Disney has been able to write show-stopping musical numbers that enchant and enrapture listeners of all ages. Of all their songs, though, I've always been most drawn to the villains. Disney has a unique way of introducing their antagonists, and I think by looking at some of these villain songs, we can better understand why Disney captures new generations of imaginations, year after year. Let's take a closer look. Writing for a musical is a unique challenge. Not only do you need to create a catchy song, but you need to balance that with the story and visuals. In order to tackle this challenge, Disney takes a collaborative approach with their writing. A great example of this is Alan Menken. Menken composed for a number of Disney films, including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. In an interview with ABC, he said that at Disney, the story and visuals evolve alongside the song. Generally, you go from the basic story to the basic structure of telling the story to what musical style you're going to use to tell the story with, where the songs lie in that structure, then one by one tackle those songs. This process is why Disney songs are able to fit so seamlessly. They've been developed right there alongside the story, instead of plugged in afterwards. For an example of this, you need to look no further than one of Disney's most iconic villain songs, Gaston. On the surface, the song seems to be telling you all about Gaston himself, but actually you kind of know that already. By the time the song comes on, you've met Gaston a few times and you know his general traits. However, by pairing the song with the visuals in the bar and having a number of voices singing, the movie shows us how everyone else feels about Gaston. By showing how much the town loves Gaston, the song further removes our antagonist from our hero, Belle. Everyone loves Gaston, except her. This sets them apart early on, and serves to set up the tension when they face off later in the movie. Another villain song that was clearly built alongside the story, instead of before or after, is Poor Unfortunate Souls from The Little Mermaid. That song serves a number of purposes in the plot. It sits at a key point in the film, where Ariel makes the deal that will become the center of the story. While advancing this plot point, it also manages to introduce the main villain. But the way that it introduces Ursula isn't by telling you that she's evil, it's by showing you. More than anything Ursula actually sings, it's the nature of the music and how it pairs with the visuals that show us she's evil. The music reflects Ursula as a character. It's got a twisted, bombastic sound in the dark key of C Minor. The makeup of the music also serves an important role in the ebb and flow of the soundtrack. It introduces a musical tension. So far, the songs have been bright and happy, and this dark song signals that the movie is about to progress into the unknown. The venture into the unknown is an important part of many Disney villain songs. With both their sounds and visuals, the songs represent a shift away from the rest of what we've seen in the musical up until that point. One of the best examples of this is Be Prepared, Scar's song from The Lion King. This song is a drastic shift from the first two of the film. The Circle of Life uses warm, comforting color palettes, complemented by a song that climbs upward dramatically in a major key. The next song, I Just Can't Wait to Be King, has a bright color palette with upbeat music in another major key. When we get to Be Prepared, we're met with a palette of darker colors and greens and a slower, dark song in a minor key. But Be Prepared isn't a complete departure from the other songs in the musical, and that's where some of the power comes from. It's built on the same musical concepts. It just feels like a dark inversion of them. Both I Just Can't Wait to Be King and The Circle of Life use percussive instruments and choirs in the background as center points to the song. Be Prepared follows this trend too. This inversion makes it feel like the villain is part of the same world as everyone else, but also hints that if they get what they want, they could shift the world into a different place entirely. For something like The Lion King, the music is almost a prediction of what's going to happen once Scar takes over the Pride Lands. It's the music of the Pride Lands, but twisted and distorted. No villain song twists things quite like Jafar's Prince Ali reprise in Aladdin. In the song, the villain takes one of the hero's songs and turns it on its head, and it works wonders. By using the same song twice, the movie highlights the opposition of Aladdin and Jafar. The ironic twist on the song helps feed into the despair the hero feels at this time. It takes one of the hero's most triumphant moments and subverts it. It's not just the classics though, Disney has continued this trend with their modern movies too. One of my personal favorite Disney villain songs comes in Friends on the Other Side from Princess and the Frog. This song falls into the exact same pattern as all of the great villain songs. It speaks with the same vocabulary as the rest of the music, imitating the New Orleans jazz that introduces the movie. However, it shifts into a darker place which matches the visual palette. Everything about the song, including the lyrics, is a venture into the unknown, the other. Over the years, Disney has created a whole host of memorable villains, and while the story and the actors are a part of the reason these villains have stuck with so many people, the songs are just as important. These songs help tell the story and show you who these characters are. Even beyond that, they show you each character's terrible potential, the potential to take our happy ending and replace it with something much worse. And isn't that what Disney's all about? That's part of what makes Disney so magical, the way they're able to use music to turn a good story into a masterpiece.