If you’re a parent, or frankly anyone closely related to or looking after a child under five – guilty as charged; I’m the happy uncle to four adorable nieces and nephews – there is a better than average chance the only song that has been lodged in your earworm since about Christmas 2013 is Frozen’s stellar centrepiece song “Let It Go”.
There is of course a very good reason for that – it’s a beautifully-written, Academy Award- worthy song that literally hits all the right notes and then some; but if you have watched more than one Disney film, and again, given how much kids love to watch multiple movies multiple times, there’s a better than average chance you have, then you’ll know how many brilliant songs Disney has in its extensive musical repertoire.
And now one very talented entertainer, Texan Todrick Hall, who first came to prominence in 2010 when he appeared on the ninth season of American Idol where he reached the semi finals, and now works on Broadway as well creating viral YouTube videos, has brought together a dizzying array of those songs in a medley that takes you through what he has termed The Evolution of Disney.
Kicking off with “Whistle While You Work” from 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and ending with, you guessed it, “Let It Go” from Frozen, he sings his way with every bit as much animation and joie de vivre as any of Disney’s beloved animated characters through all the songs you know, and the kids in your life love (go on, admit, like me, you do as well).
It’s bright, colourful, fun viewing, made all the more wonderful by the way Hall interacts seamlessly with the four filmed versions of himself that make up each shot, reminding us all the way why Disney is the master of animated and the incandescently catchy songs that go with them.