I’ve restricted the options to just songs
from Disney musicals, as opposed to songs that appeared in Disney non-musicals,
such as ‘When She Loved Me’ from Toy Story 2, otherwise it would have
made a hard task even harder (I love ‘Le Festin’ from Ratatouille)!
07. Hellfire
– The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
A left-field shout, given the crux of
this song is about the sexual frustration a pious priest feels towards the
beguiling gypsy Esmeralda. But I had to nominate Hellfire because it’s memorable, taboo, and tonally, so recherché (what other Disney film
features the line ‘he made the Devil so
much stronger than the man’?)
Essentially, the message of Hellfire is ‘if I can’t have her,
no-one can’. It’s every possessive ex-boyfriend, immortalised in a Disney song,
and fits in neatly with the plot, as dastard Claude Frollo’s unsatisfied urges
are his motivation for a Domino effect that leads to Paris burning. The
religious imagery employed in Hellfire
only go to compound Frollo’s sense of sinful lust for a woman he both despises,
yet will do anything to possess.
(On a slight film
ratings tangent, the likes of fluffy Frozen and Tangled getting rated PG
when The
Hunchback of Notre Dame, by far one of their darkest films, was only a
U, is mighty misleading. It ought to be at least a 12 for the creepy overtones
in this song alone).
06. Prince
Ali – Aladdin (1992)
