Report: ‘Frozen’ Songwriters Perform Deleted Songs 

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songwriters Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez held a benefit show for the lower school at Poly Prep in Brooklyn. Joined by stage veteran Kerry Butler and her husband — and ‘Sesame Street’ head writer and puppeteer — Joey Mazzarino, along with a spectacular Olaf puppet, the Oscar Award-winning pair led an audience of mostly students through the process of writing the music for one of the most successful animated films in history.

It wasn’t just the songs that made it into the film that everyone —

— knows and loves that were performed, however. As Kristen pointed out, 25 songs had been written for the film in all, despite only ‘7 1/2′ making the cut. ‘You really can’t get to the finished product without having some mess-ups on the way,’ she would tell us at one point during the performance. ‘The key is being resilient about it and saying that’s not a mess-up, that’s just part of the process.’ Not immune to his own share of ‘mess-ups’ either, Bobby explained he wouldn’t be doing much talking because as the composer, he rarely runs through an entire song without making mistakes. ‘However, since I am the composer,’ he joked, ‘if you do a hear a mess-up, just assume I changed the song.’ In truth, however, not all of the songs that didn’t make it were ‘mess-ups:’ although some were better left behind in this one man’s opinion, there were also some amazing iterations of songs that didn’t work due to story changes — but more on all later.

The show opened with a performance of Anna’s ‘I Want’ song, ‘For the First Time in Forever,’ performed by Butler with Kristen standing in for Elsa’s lines. Kristen then explained that before this song, there was another version of the song, called ‘More Than Just the Spare’ (which can be found on the Deluxe Edition of the film’s soundtrack), which she then performed live. The setup for the song was that in that version of the film, Elsa was seen as ‘the heir’ while Anna was derisively referred to as ‘the spare.’ It was during one of the Disney Story Trust screenings, however, that the setup was questioned. As Kristen explained, ‘every body kind of agreed it was sort like of watching a movie about Batman’s sister.’ Elsa was the star of the film, but it left Anna behind. Instead, it was decided that the filmmakers would dig deeper and explore more about the two sisters — why people should care about Anna as they did Elsa, why the two felt so isolated.

The answer came in some concept art shown to the Lopezes. In the scene, a young Anna and young Elsa sit on the floor, their worlds separated by a door. Needless to say, this lead to ‘Do You Want to Build A Snowman?’ which had its own struggles to remain in the film. but before we got the version every one knows, there was another version with different lyrics and a very different tune which we heard a demo of — ‘I don’t think the director even heard this,’ Bobby added. The original is an upbeat tune sung to a tune I can’t help but liken to Sammy Davis Jr.’s ‘The Candy Man.’ The tune, composed by Bobby, was ‘kind of sweet, but [wasn\'t] emotional enough,’ Kristen explained — she had a different tune in mind. Interestingly enough, the lyrics of the original song seem to fit the tune of the film’s version pretty well. This portion of the program was closed with a live performance of ‘Do You Want to Build A Snowman?’ sung by three of Poly Prep’s students, including the Lopez’s daughter, Katie, who reprised her role as the youngest Anna.

The snowman song acted as an appropriate segue into Olaf and his origins. ‘When we first showed up, Elsa was an evil, blue person,’ noted Kristen. ‘She had an army of evil henchmen, the first was Olaf — and he was there mostly to be annoying.’ ‘He was a foodie,’ Bobby added, ‘he had a really strong sense of smell.’ Olaf would eventually become a way of connecting the two sisters, however. Initially it was a snow globe that the two would pass between them, but Olaf became the conduit — building him as children would be their happiest memory and so Elsa would reconstruct him subconsciously during the ‘Let it Go’ sequence.

But they wanted something extra for Olaf — what if Olaf loved warmth? Before ‘In Summer,’ there was another Olaf song, which the Lopezes seemingly apologetically wrote. They had not found the naivete of Olaf, they remained fixated on his annoying aspect. The result was a Caribbean-inspired song called ‘Hot Hot Ice,’ for which we heard a demo of the cocky Olaf sing about how his ‘snow-ninja technique’ would leave the snow smokin’. The demo was followed up by a live performance of ‘In Summer’ as performed by the Olaf puppet with the assistance of Mazzarino.

And now it’s time for a riddle: how many ways can Elsa send an icy blast through Anna’s heart? The answer: at least three. It all depends on what the current story idea is and the subsequent song that plays out between them at Elsa’s ice palace. Originally, Elsa was a villain and ends up kidnapping Anna during her wedding and summoning her to the palace where Elsa ends up intentionally freezing Anna’s heart so she would empathize with Elsa’s plight. For this version of the film, the Lopezes wrote a song called ‘Cool With Me,’ which was performed live with Kristen assuming the role of Elsa and Butler as Anna. This was, by far, one of my favorite 

songs yet and it’s a shame it couldn’t find its way into the film due to the story changes. I can only hope it gets reworked and inserted into the Broadway musical somehow. The song basically starts out as a conversation between an Elsa willing to bury the hatchet and an uncertain, wary Anna and features verses such as the following:

A: Then you trash the church and freeze the guests and ruin it!

E: Elsa’s dead, now instead, you’ll address me as the Snow Queen A: Nah, no way!

A: Yes, you’re really quite the showman with these mean and mutant snowmen —

E: So let’s forget I’m right and forget you’re wrong

E: Okay! Let’s try forgivin’, maybe we could live in — harmony

E: If you could just chill out! and say what’s done is done

Perhaps more epically, the song also features a rap of sorts performed by Elsa in which she rattles off the names of her henchmen that are ‘cool with’ her.

Again, however, screenings at the Disney Story Trust began to look deeper at the story structure and didn’t see why the audience should be subjected to two sisters being so mean to each other, so they altered the story. In the next iteration, Anna was no longer a perfect princess, but more like she is in the film. Elsa, too, is more like she is in the film having already sung ‘Let It Go,’ which was the defining point in which Elsa was no longer considered a villain in the film’s development process. But in this iteration, in which the sisters perform ‘Life’s Too Short,’ (also available on the Deluxe Edition), Anna’s ice injection comes about as a result of Elsa’s mistake, which resulted in Anna’s faux pas of trying to present Elsa with her gloves, which Elsa perceives as being put ‘back in her cage.’ Not only was the demo played at the presentation, but we also got to see the animatics (animated storyboards) from the sequence and the biggest takeaway is that Olaf (who is present along with Kristoff) can twerk like nobody’s business. Kristen also was careful to point out that ‘Life’s Too Short’ features some lines very similar to ‘Cool With Me’ only instead of Elsa placing all of the blame on Anna, they share it. In the end, the story’s message was revised to be that love trumps fear and it’s Elsa’s fear that ends up causing Anna to receive the icy blast, and we end up with the ‘For the First Time in Forever’ reprise.

Moving on to Hans and what would become ‘Love is an Open Door,’ Kristen explained that the idea behind Hans’ song was that it needed to hint at his less-than-honorable intentions so that upon first viewing, they’d go unnoticed, but upon a second viewing, there would be hints at his apathy towards Anna. The first song, which we heard as a demo and is also on the Deluxe Edition, was ‘You’re You.’ Ultimately the song was scrapped because, as Bobby noted, it didn’t sell you on the idea that they were both in love. Instead, Kristen turned to where all of history’s greatest writers turned to for inspiration — the ‘Golf N’ Stuff’ scene in

. ‘Love is an Open Door’ was intended to be the ‘best first date ever,’ she explained. ‘We tried to write that song you would sing at karaoke  and you would look at the other person and say, “let’s move in together,” and you’d spend the next five years getting out of that situation.’ The song was then performed life with married couples Butler and Mazzarino performing the first half and the Lopezes performing the second half.

By all accounts, the trolls were ‘last minute’ when it came to 

development. As a given example, ‘Fixer Upper,’ according to Kristen, was recorded in July of 2013, for the film’s release in November. Still, like many other elements in the film, the trolls went through several versions, as did their respective song. Throughout the changes, however, there were two key elements that needed to be addressed: first, the song must depict the moment in which Anna and Kristoff fall in love and second, it must convey the film’s message, which of course changed throughout the process. According to Bobby, one person at Disney said the song had to be ‘both a floor wax and a dessert topping.’

In the first iteration, the trolls were mop-topped in a ‘Burning Man meets hot springs environment’ with the film’s message of heart vs. head, feeling vs. thinking. The result was a boy-band type song whose demo was played. Personally, to me, the song sounded like it was something straight out of

. Bobby noted Disney’s response to the song was ‘we love the energy of that song,’ which Kristen decoded to ‘when they say that, you know you’re going to have to go back to the drawing board.’

Story revisions transformed the trolls into magic creatures that live in an underground cave with the new message about seeing things from another’s perspective. This was a particular treat for me because I have heard Kristen talk about ‘Someone Else’s Shoes’ multiple times before, noting it always ended up with John Lasseter wondering how foot fungus made its way into the film, but I had never heard it until it was played for us in demo form. The gist of the song is that the lead troll instructs Anna and Kristoff to walk in each other’s shoes and he’s not making a metaphor. The song also gets in rhyming ‘reindeer poop’ and ‘tomato soup’ — at least until Anna and Kristoff exchange shoes, in which case it’s now ‘reindeer soup’ and ‘tomato poop.’ After the film found its final message of love being stronger than fear, ‘Fixer Upper’ was born. The sequence from the film was shown with proud mother Kristen explaining how youngest daughter Annie — now in kindergarten — was in nursery school when she delivered her ‘I don’t see no ring’ line, to the audible amazement of the audience.

The presentation concluded with Butler performing ‘Let It Go,’ which was the defining moment during the film’s production which transformed Elsa from the villain to being its protagonist. The song is in response to Elsa’s secret being revealed to the world and now having the opportunity to openly embrace it.

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@TheRealGrimmie and @tf3 to perform on next week\'s @DancingABC #DWTS

@del3ose @MouseInfo @DisneyParks it was never there to begin with

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@DibberBats wow. glad it worked out. the toy park is amazing

Get ready to celebrate your @DisneyParks #DisneyFlipSide ! (not a joke) #DisneySide

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That performance of Last Midnight by Bernadette Peters. Wow. #IntoTheWoods

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@ItachiIshtar I know. I didn\'t hear them but that\'s where I heard complaints about Depp

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