Five Critiques of the Billboard DisneyVerse Song Rankings

Greg Ehrhardt, OnStage Blog Editorial Staff

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Billboard published a ranking of the top 100 ‘Disneyverse’ songs of all time, which includes songs from all possible Disney properties (including theme park rides), and boy, did people on social media have thoughts on it!

Debating about song rankings is fundamentally dumb for one big reason: songs speak to each individual differently than anyone else. Also, some people (like yours truly) listen to music more for the beat than the lyrics, while others value the lyrical meaning above production value.

There’s no right or wrong way to evaluate songs; weirdly, I appreciate that about music. Besides downloads and purchasing data, there’s not much analytics can do to assess (and ruin) the music business, just as the arts should be.

With ALL that said: there were a lot of problems with Billboard’s Top 100 Disneyverse songs of all time, so much so that Chris Peterson is writing his own top 100 Disney songs. I’m not about to publish my rankings, but I do have some specific thoughts on some of Billboard’s rankings:

1) Poor Unfortunate Souls has no business being ranked #65

a. This is comically too low. Many people have tried to cover this song, and none have come close to matching Pat Carrol’s 1 of 1 performance (although it is fun to see Jonathan Freeman, who played Jafar on Broadway for years and the original animated voice actor, sing it). Poor Unfortunate Souls also set the bar for all future villain songs, and this is still arguably the best Disney villain song ever. This leads me to point #2

2) There aren’t enough Disney villain songs on the list

a. Poor Unfortunate Souls is the best villain song, in my opinion, but no inclusion of “Be Prepared,” “Gaston,” or “Prince Ali”? It’s even more bizarre considering Constantine’s song “I’ll get you what you want” from ‘Muppets Most Wanted’ and “Cruella De Vil” made the list. I can’t conceive an argument where they make a list, but “Gaston,” “Prince Ali,” and “Be Prepared” do not.

3) Billboard tried a bit too hard to represent the entire Disney portfolio

a. There are some weird IP inclusions on this list: “That’s So Raven” (#28, and the actual song is less than a minute long), “Brother Bear” (#94), “Lemonade Mouth” (#79), and several inclusions of obscure theme park attraction ride theme songs (like “Kitchen Kabaret”, which ended in 1994).

I already listed three iconic songs left off the list in favor of these songs. I get the publishing instinct to start a conversation and cover all the niche fan bases out there, but come on, what are we doing, especially considering the next point #4:

4) No Descendants songs made the list

a. I’m a bit biased here; I’ve written about Descendants a few times for the blog and even ranked all of the Descendants’ songs. But you can’t have a top Disney 100 list without “Rotten to the Core” and (I would argue) “Night Falls,” both of which broke into the pop culture lexicon and are outrageously catchy. They included three songs from the High School Musical franchise, so it doesn’t make much sense to leave Descendants, a wildly popular Disney Channel franchise due to the music, out ultimately.

5) ‘It’s a Small World’ being in the top 100 at all, never mind at #3

a. Let’s make one thing clear: I’m a (sort of) “It’s A Small World” apologist from a ride perspective. It’s not a waste of time, as many want to argue, and the song itself shouldn’t make your ears bleed. But putting what, in essence, is a long jingle #3 ahead of so many acts of songwriting and performing brilliance is malpractice.

Just ask yourself: is there a world where SiriusXM or any other online radio app would ever put this song on air for people to listen to? The answer to other songs featured in Disneyworld songs is actually yes (Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion).

But It’s A Small World? It’s insulting to put this song at #3 ahead of even those other rides’ theme songs, never mind academy award nominated songs like ‘Belle,’ ‘How Far I’ll Go,’ etc.

As I said at the top, anyone can nitpick any song rankings (plenty of readers complain about mine!): it’s arguably what social media was engineered for! But this specific song ranking shows me Billboard was interested in many things besides publishing a definitive Disney song ranking.