Some things you may not have known about the music from The Little Mermaid:
Originally, Sebastian was to have an English accent. It was lyricist/producer Howard Ashman who suggested he be Jamaican. This opened the door to calypso style numbers like "Under the Sea", which won the Academy Award.
Songwriting team Alan Menken and Howard Ashman were brought to the attention of Disney Animation Chair Jeffrey Katzenberg by longtime colleague (and future Dreamworks co-founder) David Geffen, who was producing the team's off-Broadway musical "Little Shop of Horrors".
When Scuttle is providing "vocal romantic stimulation" to Eric and Ariel while they are rowing in the lagoon, he is actually squawking his own version of Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet".
'Jodi Benson (I)' sang 'Part of Your World' in the dark to get that 'under the sea' feeling.
"Part of Your World" was nearly cut; Jeffery Katzenberg felt that it was "boring", as well as being too far over the heads of the children for whom it was intended. At a test screening children were restless during the song which did not have finished animation - in particular one child that sat in front of Jeffery Katzenberg and spilled his popcorn and was more interested in picking it up than watching the sequence.
Before recording "Poor Unfortunate Souls", Pat Carroll asked Howard Ashman to sing the song one more time to get it right. He obliged, and as he sang he added little spoken ad-libs that Carroll then incorporated into her performance. These included Ursula saying "Pathetic" at the mer couple she conjures up as an example, and the line "Life's full of tough choices, innit?"
When Ariel is singing "Part of our World," there is a bust of Abraham Lincoln.
Movie was adapted as a Broadway musical in 2007.
Movie was adapted as a Broadway musical in 2007.
While writing "Part of Your World", Alan Menken and Howard Ashman discovered that the song shared contextual and rhythmic similarities between "Somewhere That's Green"; a song from their earlier musical, Little Shop of Horrors (1986). Hence, leading the duo to humorously nickname "Part of Your World" as "Somewhere That's Dry".
These links go to Amazon where you can find CDs of Little Mermaid Music
The MP3 is available for download (for your ipod or MP3 player)
![The Little Mermaid [Original Soundtrack]](http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/pict/170518798428_0.jpg)
