You know the feeling. You exit a Disney theme park and take the Tragical Express back to reality. When you exit the Disney bubble, you don’t leave everything behind, though. A small part of your journey stays with you, possibly longer than you’d like.
The music from one of the signature attractions has left an indelible impression on you, even if you didn’t realize it at the time. For days, maybe even weeks after you depart, you hum that infernal tune that won’t leave your head. It’s a bittersweet earworm that keeps your mind at Disney long after your body has left the Happiest Place on Earth.
How did Disney composers craft such masterpieces? Musical accompaniment is part of the company’s DNA. Keep in mind that Disney has always tethered its movies to music, going all the way back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Three different sets of lyrics from Walt Disney’s first feature film have stood the test of time. There’s Heigh-Ho, Some Day My Prince Will Come, and Whistle While You Work, each of which is roughly 80 years old, yet you know every word of all of them.
When Imagineers plotted to build revolutionary new theme park attractions in 1954, the year leading up to the debut of Disneyland, they received a directive from their leader. Uncle Walt demanded that music accompany attractions in order to enhance the enjoyment of the world’s first theme park tourists. From day one, Peter Pan’s Flight featured music from the 1953 theatrical release, Walt Disney’s Peter Pan. In order to deliver the truest simulation of one of the movies in the library as an attraction, Mr. Disney maintained that a background soundtrack was requisite.
While the accompaniments were modest during the early days of Disneyland, later attractions featured music more and more as the technology advanced. Over time, music evolved into an everyday part of a visit to a Disney theme park. Some songs are of course more memorable than others. Several have likely popped in your head already while thinking about this topic. How much do you know about those songs, though?
For all the times you’ve hummed the songs for hours on end, did you ever take the time to learn the history of each piece? Don’t worry if you didn’t. That’s the purpose of this article. In this piece, we’ll examine a few of the greatest songs in theme park history, learning the genesis of their creation as well as why they tie together so well with their attractions. And we’ll start with the one that has defined theme park musical accompaniment for more than 50 years now. Without further ado, let there be earworms!
It’s a Small World
Image: Disney
When WED Enterprises dominated the 1964 New York World’s Fair with their four breathtaking attractions, the one that took the least amount of time has also proven the most memorable. Less than a year prior to the event, a member of Pepsi-Cola’s board of directors, actress Joan Crawford, saved the company from disaster. They’d planned to host a World’s Fair exhibition for several years, but none of the prototypes they commissioned were satisfactory.
Crawford leveraged her Hollywood connections to liaise with Walt Disney, pitching him on the idea of a lucrative year of work. In exchange, Disney would push his already overworked team of Imagineers to build something from scratch that would wow the attendants at this global event. The Imagineers thought their boss was crazy to accept such an intensive gig against such a tight deadline. It was the music team that had the most difficult task, though. Since they’re so important to several of these songs, let’s take a brief look at them first.
Musical DNA
Image: Disney
Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman are an unheralded part of American folklore. If you think their names sound familiar but aren’t sure why, the likely explanation is that you’ve seen Saving Mr. Banks. The brothers as portrayed by B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman were a key part of the film. Even if you know them by the name of their act, the Sherman Brothers, you’re unlikely to appreciate the depth and value of their contributions to art and pop culture. No songwriting team in history has written as many soundtrack scores as the Shermans.
The boys came by their skill naturally. They were born in the 1920s to a Ukrainian musician named Al Sherman. A native of the Russian Empire, Sherman too was a legacy performer. He had lingering memories of his father playing in front of the royal court of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That man would later move his family to New York in order to avoid the political issues cropping up for Russian Jews in Europe at the start of the 20th century. Frustrated by his reception as an immigrant, the grandfather of the Sherman Brothers abandoned his wife and five children to go off on his own.
Al Sherman had no choice but to take up the family business, becoming the primary source of family income at the age of 13. By 16, he was an accomplished pianist even though he could barely speak English. He became a legend of Tin Pan Alley, the East Coast musical mecca from the Gay 90s through the Roaring 20s.
The Happiest Boat on Earth
Image: Disney
Musical talent flowed through the veins of the Shermans, something father Al would discover of sons Richard and Robert in quick fashion. The boys were Hollywood naturals. Their mother was a silent film actress named Rosa Dancis while their father created popular tunes for the Ziegfeld Follies. A career of making music for movies might as well have been written on the boys’ birth certificates.
When they were 25 and 23, father Al pushed his boys into writing music lyrics. By 1958, they’d scored a top-ten hit with a single entitled Tall Paul. It was the artist involved who changed the course of movie and theme park history, though. Judy Harriet was a relatively anonymous member of the Mickey Mouse Club who had direct ties to Uncle Walt. When her single blew up, she passed along their contact information, leading to a deal between Music World Corporation, the record label run by the Sherman Brothers, and Wonderland Music Company, Disney’s music arm. In short order, the Shermans were staff songwriters for Walt Disney Studios.
Richard and Robert’s first official song with Walt Disney Studios was Strummin’ Song, which debuted in an obscure 1961 release named The Horsemasters. The only noteworthy thing here is that Annette Funicello starred in it, making the Sherman Brothers the unofficial songwriters of choice for Mickey Mouse Club divas. What’s important about the 1961 release is that they proved to their new employer that they could meet deadlines while crafting creative tunes.
Only a couple of years later, the Shermans were already an integral part of Walt Disney’s staff. During the planning of the four exhibits at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, he constantly sought their advice on musical accompaniments for the Ford and State of Illinois Pavilions. Once Uncle Walt shook hands with Pepsi, he tasked the Sherman Brothers with a musical assignment.
What Disney told the lyricists is that he planned to build a boat ride. The brothers received a storyboard presentation of what their boss had described to Pepsi as “the happiest cruise that ever sailed.” All their leader could offer beyond the pictures was the national anthem of some of the countries included. Everyone involved agreed that the current output was disastrous. The anthems played too close together, causing a chaotic soundtrack of competing songs.
Beyond the failed current concept, all the Shermans knew of the project was the name: Children of the World. The directive from the boss was simple. “I need one song.” The accompanying title wasn’t much to build on, and even that bit of information proved incorrect in the end. Thematically, it had the right idea, though.
Imagineers would build a series of structures highlighting the joyous aspects of dozens of individual countries. Each one would poke fun at broad clichés about the civilizations while also embracing the unity of the modern world. In other words, the Pepsi exhibition would celebrate unbridled joy.
The politics of joy
Image: Disney
Designing a song for this silly international boat ride came with some hidden difficulties. For starters, the national anthems couldn’t play with each applicable section for reasons of logistics. The installation had lots of room, but adding specific music players for every country wasn’t feasible. Instead, the song required lyrics that were fairly universal. They could translate easily into most major dialects. Since the underlying philosophy of Children of the World was inclusiveness, the lyrics also had to reflect kinship.
A problem existed.
The early 1960s were an especially turbulent period in modern world history. The Cold World had grown intense in 1962 when John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev engaged in a military showdown. I won’t bore you with the details of the Cuban Missile Crisis other than to say two things. First, it had a profound albeit unintended impact on theme park history. Second, Thirteen Days, a movie based on the Cuban Missile Crisis, is fantastic. You should watch it.
What’s critical about the Cuban Missile Crisis is that Disney wanted to deliver a message of hope, peace, and prosperity during an era of political turmoil. The exhibition they planned for the New York World’s Fair needed music that drove home this theme. The Shermans faced a seemingly impossible situation in coming up with a simple, easily translated song of unity and happiness. As you know, they aced their test.
Some love with a little twist
The next time you listen to It’s a Small World, think about the lyrics from the perspective of a world facing the potential of a third World War in less than 50 years. Now consider how the Sherman Brothers argued through basic themes that we as a people have no cause to fight. In their words, “There’s so much that we share that it’s time we’re aware.” Later, they continue, “There is just one moon and one golden sun. And a smile means friendship to everyone.” It’s a message of similarity among all nations.
Then, the lyrics repetitively circle back to the thought process that terrified everyone during the aftermath of World War II. Citizens of many countries were painfully aware that the world felt smaller and more insular than ever during the early days of the television era. People were connected in a way that had never happened before. It scared lots of folks in the same manner that the internet did during its early days.
The Shermans addressed that fear directly, offering a gentle reminder that knowing more about your fellow man is a positive. They drive this point home with the lyric, “Though the mountains divide and the oceans are wide.” They also added popular musical instruments from across the world to accentuate the message. Tahiti’s section includes their world famous drums, Scotland comes with bagpipes, and Peru features reed flutes, all of which are cultural staples. The artists understood that the best way to discuss inclusiveness is by displaying it.
Image: Disney
The brothers revealed their song to their boss by playing it for Walt Disney as they walked through the exhibit. Their leader delightedly listened with rapt attention. Even he couldn’t have understood how impacting their lyrics would become, though. Neither did the lyricists for that matter.
Richard Sherman said of It’s a Small World: “We thought, ‘Well, when the World’s Fair is over, that will be the end of it. For two years, they’ll have this thing.’ We never dreamed it would have the ‘legs’ as they call it, the distance that it’s run.” To Sherman’s mind, the attraction would never leave New York. Imagine the surprise his brother and he faced when Uncle Walt persuaded Pepsi to ship the gear to Disneyland. And that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what happened next.
Since its 1964 introduction, It’s a Small World has become arguably the most played and most translated song on the planet, aptly fitting considering its origins. With the arrival of Disneyland Paris in 1992, this piece of music played every many times every hour at some Disneyland theme park, a streak that will continue for more than 25 years. By conservative estimates, it plays 1,200 times per 16-hour day per park. Remember that one month when Gangnam Style was ubiquitous? It’s a Small World has behaved that way at every Disney theme park since 1966. It’s the seminal achievement in theme park attraction musical accompaniment.
Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress
Image: Disney
As impacting as the popularity of It’s a Small World has been over the decades, it wasn’t the only song for a Disney attraction that the Shermans wrote. In fact, it wasn’t the only song for the 1964 New York World’s Fair! General Electric petitioned WED Enterprises to build a pavilion for what would become Progressland. They paid for this sponsorship well before Pepsi, which is why it’s a bit odd that their attraction became a historical footnote compared to It’s a Small World.
Still, the GE attraction enjoys cultural significance of its own. Disney Imagineers crafted Carousel of Progress for their peers, and it has earned a place at the front of line of Walt Disney-built attractions. In fact, a running joke exists at Walt Disney World, the current home of the exhibit, that if Disney ever tried to close it permanently, guests would riot. Every few years, a rumor pops up that it’s going away, and the reaction is always vociferously passionate. Disney fans are extremely protective of one of Uncle Walt’s pet projects. And one of the reasons why is the sunnily optimistic song.
When Disney commissioned the Shermans to write a song for the Carousel of Progress, they put a lot of thought into what the exhibition represented. They correctly deduced that while other Disney attractions at the World’s Fair were about the people of today, Carousel of Progress should cast a spotlight on how the discoveries of today lead directly to a better tomorrow. The song they produced, There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, is shamelessly positive and energetic. It’s also likely to give anyone at the Carousel of Progress a huge earworm since it plays several times during the show. What is it with the Sherman Brothers and song repetition?
A fitting tribute
Image: Disney
Why has the song stood the test of time? The attraction reveals how much technology advanced from the turn of the century through modern times, which meant the Mad Men era for the original version of Carousel of Progress. Over the past half a century, Disney has updated the ride when appropriate, which is why granny now wears virtual reality headgear while she unlocks achievements in an alien blaster videogame. The song, however, remains the same since it’s gone from the hip tune of the 1964 World’s Fair to delightfully retro more than 50 years later.
The other key is how it links to Disney history. A year after the World’s Fair ended, Walt Disney died from lung cancer. By this point, the Sherman Brothers viewed themselves as keepers of the torch of the spirit of Walt Disney. They were the musical extension of his creativity. In their estimation, There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow fit perfectly with the legacy of their friend and leader.
Disney had always embraced the idea of a better future. He’d invested much of his personal fortune seeing that dream become a reality, and his most ambitious project just before his death was to create a utopian society, the ultimate beautiful tomorrow. The Shermans viewed their lyrics as prescient in their description of Uncle Walt, even if they didn’t recall that being the intention when they wrote the song.
Think of these lyrics in particular: “He follows his dream with mind and heart, and when it becomes a reality, it’s a dream come true you and me.” Ostensibly, those lines apply to all mankind. They seem especially accurate when linked to Disney, though. Even though they’re not, these words could describe the first Mickey Mouse cartoons, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disneyland, the 1964 New York World’s Fair, or his planned Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. You can understand why the Sherman Brothers came to view There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow as Walt Disney’s theme song.
The one oddity about the piece is that it hasn’t made its way through every iteration of Carousel of Progress. A lot of the changes came down to sponsorship requests from GE. To Disney’s credit, they’ve always kept the Shermans in the loop when they’ve updated it, though. The original version gave way to The Best Time of Your Life in 1974. Then, GE requested another new song from the brothers. They delivered a catchy tune called New Horizons, but GE decided not to substitute that one. Instead, they ditched the Shermans in favor of a song written by – I kid you not – the CEO of GE. Its reception was understandably icy, but it lasted for several years anyway.
In 1994, Disney went back to the future by restoring There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, and it remains the sing-song lyric of your worst nightmare to this day. I last visited a park two months ago yet I still hear that infernal song in my head every time I think of Carousel of Progress. The strange part is how much I love it despite this aggravation. It’s catchy and stubbornly optimistic, two staples of the Sherman Brothers.
The Enchanted Tiki Room
Image: Disney
The third song inevitably linked to the Shermans is also their laziest work. It’s basically the word tiki repeated so often that I suspect Tiki Barber’s mother suffered subliminal trauma that caused her to sign that name on his birth certificate. Seriously, sing the lyrics once and then have a mental debate. Did you just say the word tiki more in those two minutes than you had in your entire life up until that moment? Unless you’re a New York Giants broadcaster, the answer is certainly yes.
Let’s break down the lyrics to reinforce this point. The first singalong line goes: “In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki tiki room”. That’s eight words, five of which are tiki. That’s not lyricism. It’s an echo.
Okay, I’m mostly joking because only someone who is dead inside wouldn’t warm to the charms of Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room. It’s the first attraction to feature one of the theme park industry’s strapless, audio-animatronics (AAs). When Imagineers designed the room, they had grand plans to combine eating and drinking with talking birds, but those fell by the wayside. Instead, the show focused on four talking (and singing) macaws named Fritz, Jose, Michael, and Pierre, who host a gathering of 150 of their avian pals. Since the birds are AAs, *ahem* hygiene isn’t an issue.
Instead, the focus of the presentation is on silly fun. The macaws host a singalong for guests. The presentation is a show in the finest sense of the term. The Shermans simply had to augment the experience by offering the perfect music to put a smile on the faces of theme park tourists. They chose to implement this strategy by asking guests to say the word tiki a lot. If my repetition of this fact bothers you, then the song itself must drive you absolutely bonkers. The Shermans were devout believers in lyrics that get in a person’s head and stay there. Perhaps no song of theirs exemplifies this philosophy than The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room.
To be fair, Uncle Walt asked a lot of the Sherman Brothers on this assignment. Nobody had ever written a song for robots before. That’s effectively what happens during the performance. The Shermans designed lyrics that a piece of hardware had to replicate in believable fashion. Otherwise, the audience would lose their sense of whimsy. To fit the mechanical mouths, the composers tweaked their ideas more and more, generally having to perform reduction to their grander ideas. Ergo, the repetition is by necessity more than laziness. They did what they had to do to deliver a satisfactory accompaniment for their boss. Amazingly, nobody has ever updated the lyrics over the years as AAs have advanced dramatically in terms of technological capabilities. Instead, the lyrics were reduced to make each performance shorter. So, if anybody’s being lazy, it’s modern Disney execs.
During their run of Disney compositions, the brothers earned nine nominations in variants of the Best Original Song and Score categories at the Academy Awards. They won twice, both times with Mary Poppins. The winning song might surprise you, though. It wasn’t for Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious but Chim Chim Cher-ee instead. They also won for Best Score with the film, which means that if you haven’t watched Saving Mr. Banks yet, you should do so soon.
Over the course of their partnership with Disney, they created music for 10 different attractions plus the World Showcase March at Epcot. In addition to It’s a Small World, Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room and Carousel of Progress, they also contributed to Adventure Thru Inner Space, America on Parade, CommuniCore, Journey into Imagination, Magic Journeys, Meet the World, and Rocket Rods. Whether you’ve ever realized it or not, your visits to Disney theme parks were chock full of encounters with the music of the Sherman Brothers.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Image: Disney
Other artists have added to the musical tapestry of Disney themed attractions as well. Some of them weren’t even technically musicians yet they did what they could do to impress the head of WED Enterprises. A perfect example is Xavier Atencio, a cartoonist by trade. The illustrator signed with Walt Disney Pictures in 1938 when he was only 19 years old. He was understandably willing to do anything to keep his dream job with the company.
Over the years, Disney asked his artist to develop myriad talents including storytelling, which is why Atencio’s fingerprints are all over the Haunted Mansion. He also earned the opportunity to work on Pirates of the Caribbean. Because of this odd job, Atencio still collects royalties as a songwriter. He composed the music while actual composer George Bruns wrote the lyrics.
Bruns enjoyed a more regular trajectory as a Disney employee. He composed the music for the Davy Crockett television series that became the pop culture staple of the mid-1950s. After that, he’d earned Walt Disney’s loyalty and admiration for life. Bruns earned four Academy Awards nominations for his Disney film compositions such as Robin Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and my beloved The Sword in the Stone.
The origin of the song is simple. Pirates of the Caribbean was the final attraction Walt Disney constructed prior to his death. He asked Atencio to step outside his comfort zone to enhance the thrills and humor of the ride with some musical accompaniment. In order to maximize his employee’s chance at success, Disney paired him with a trusted musician. Together, they wrote a silly, fun song that’s been celebrated and lampooned from artists as diverse as Jimmy Buffett, the Jonas Brothers, and Smosh.
Image: Disney
An actual musician working with an illustrator seems like an unlikely combination but with the benefit of hindsight, it exemplifies how capably Uncle Walt drew out the best work of his employees by taking them outside their comfort zones. Bruns and Atencio quickly deduced that a pirate shanty needed the right tone of raucousness and humor to succeed. If it were too scary, it’d frighten the children who make up the life’s blood of Disney theme park attendance.
Instead, they highlighted the frivolity of a life spent passing time on the open sea. And what drives away boredom better than alcohol? Perhaps no lyric at any Disney attraction gets to the core of its subject matter better than “We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot. Drink up, me hearties, you ho!”
This staple of Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me) not only became an instant classic for the E-Ticket theme park attraction, Pirates of the Caribbean, but also wound up as a key plot point of the film franchise based on the attraction, one that wouldn’t debut until roughly 40 years later.
Yo Ho is a ludicrously over the top celebration of professional honesty. Pirates have no need to put on airs. Instead, they spend their downtime relishing the scandalous behavior that makes their lifestyle so forbidden. They were the adrenaline junkies of the 18th and 19th century, and Bruns drives that point home repeatedly with his unrepentant lyrics. Out of all the songs discussed in this piece, Yo Ho is the most fun to sing, especially if you have an uncorked jug of rum in your hand.
Splash Mountain
Image: Disney
Not every song performed in tandem with a Disney attraction was created specifically for the ride. More and more, Disney takes existing popular songs from their extensive library and introduces them into themed attractions. The standard practice of today wasn’t the norm in 1989 when Disneyland introduced Splash Mountain for the first time.
Rather than contracting a composer to build something original with Sherman Brothers-esque lyrics such as ‘Splash Splash Splash goes the mountain’, the designers of the attraction did something risky. They chose to recreate the characters of the long discredited Disney movie, Song of the South. One of the driving impetuses for the decision is that for all its tasteless caricatures, the film offers one of the finest soundtracks in the history of Disney. To that end, Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah was the Let It Go of 1947 and remains a timeless classic 70 years later.
When Imagineers plotted their strategy for a water-based ride with a splash on that end, they settled on characters from Song of the South as the most entertaining. Independent of how you feel about the movie, Brer Rabbit’s misguided search for the Laughing Place is memorable and fun as a theme park story. As I wrote in Behind the Ride: Splash Mountain, Disney also stacked the deck by featuring the best quartet of musical interludes for a theme park attraction.
While Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah is the obvious inclusion due to its ubiquity in the history of Disney musical compilations (any greatest hits release without it is inaccurately named), Splash Mountain isn’t a one-hit wonder. Instead, it also features Everybody Has a Laughing Place, Burrow’s Lament, and How Do You Do to provide a diverse grouping of songs throughout one of the longest rides at any Disney theme park. And each of them work brilliantly.
Image: Disney
As I’ve mentioned before, it’s How Do You Do that sticks with me the longest even though the climax of the ride rewards the passenger with a roaring celebratory offering of Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah. Part of the explanation for this is that How Do You Do plays twice during the boat ride, once as a musical version and then later with its undeniably catchy lyrical hook.
The explanation for the powerful integration of music with Splash Mountain is its original location at Disneyland. The attraction is positioned close to New Orleans Square. As such, happy jazz music with a heavy dose of big band orchestral flavor meshes organically with both the original movie and the themed land of the Happiest Place on Earth.
At Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, the setting is Frontierland. For this reason, the music here offers more of a country vibe to remain thematic. The jazz instruments aren’t in use here. Instead, Splash Mountain in Orlando features banjoes and harmonicas, which is more appropriate anyway. After all, the park is only a few hours away from the actual setting of The Song of the South.
At all the theme parks that feature Splash Mountain, The Song of the South soundtrack permeates not just throughout the ride itself but also in the line queue. Instrumental versions of five other songs play on a 25-minute loop. Several of the songs are the same, although the Orlando version also includes some non-Disney titles such as Old MacDonald Had a Farm to play up the southern locality. Due to all the music playing while waiting in line, Splash Mountain has done more for soundtrack sales of Song of the South than anything since the 1947 Academy Awards.
Image: Disney
While perfecting the ride, Disney chose to re-record the classic songs to give them a fresher sound than the then 40-year-old versions. Three sisters who were all Disney cast members at the time performed Burrow’s Lament and Everybody Has a Laughing Place. A 29-piece recording act with the un-Disney name of The Floozies provided the voices for the bullfrogs and other characters throughout the ride and in the song How Do You Do. Finally, a choir of 75 members worked together to construct one of the toe-tapping-est versions of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah known to man.
Disney Imagineers spent more than 80 hours per Splash Mountain AA to assure that their movements matched the musical accompaniments. This attention to detail explains why Splash Mountain has maintained its consistent popularity for almost 30 years now. The meshing of music and attraction here is the gold standard.
Given the above, it’s understandable why so many of your favorite Disney rides automatically remind you of a certain song. That mental association is intentional. Imagineers have used specific but subtle methods to set your mood as you enjoy the attractions in some cases. In others, they’ve simply played the same lyric from the same song over and over again until you’re ready to shove Q-Tips all the way into your eardrums to make the noise stop. Oddly, both methods are equally effective.
Whichever one you prefer, you’ve spent your whole life enjoying the nuanced sounds of countless Disney classics as you waited in line for attractions. Then, you heard other masterpieces while enjoying the actual rides. Disney prioritizes the setting of mood as one of the integral elements of theme park design. While sights and scents are also important, music is the universal language that speaks directly to your soul.
Walt Disney understood this, which is why he hired the Sherman Brothers and assigned them to theme park attractions just as often as movie soundtracks. His philosophy also explains why he sometimes asked Imagineers working on rides to come up with the complementary sounds. Uncle Walt knew that the employees most intimately involved with the creative process offered the best ideas, even if those workers didn’t know they were capable of such artistry. Because of his bold perspective on the mechanics of the theme park experience, vacationers continue to enjoy many classic songs from the early Disney movie catalog in their modern formats as Disney attractions today. And if the price of such virtuosity is an earworm that lasts for months, that’s a small price to pay, right? RIGHT???
