The Disney Song Almost Cut From ‘The Little Mermaid’ That Became One of the Studio’s Most Beloved Ballads

Kids can be a fickle audience. You never know what’s going to capture their imagination, and often their attention spans require many things to pique their interest all at once. Because of this, making a kids’ movie is no easy feat. You have to make it accessible enough for kids of all ages to stay focused, but you also want to tell a story worth telling—full of traditional plot points and a moral. No production company does both of these things better than Disney.

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Disney has countless movies that have wowed kids for generations, teaching them about life with semi-complex characters and impeccable songs. But, at times, the powers that be at Disney have flirted with the idea of choosing attention span over quality. There was one song in Disney’s The Little Mermaid that nearly got cut for this reason. Without this track, this movie wouldn’t have hit quite the same.

The Disney Song Almost Cut From ‘The Little Mermaid’

The Little Mermaid has many great songs, all of which function as plot devices. But none of the songs are as pivotal as “Part Of Your World.” Ariel, played by Jodi Benson, shares her hopes with the audience. It’s her “hero” song, as Disney coined it, setting the scene for where the rest of the film will be going. It’s full of heart, longing, and no shortage of emotionality. But because it is a ballad, Disney executives nearly cut it from the film for fear of losing kids in the audience.

“The song was going to be possibly cut because kids were getting restless during the testing of the movie and dropping popcorn in the aisles and stuff like that,” Former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg once said.  

“Part Of Your World”

It’s hard to imagine this animated classic without this song in the tracklist. It’s one of the most beloved Disney songs of all time, almost instantly becoming a standard. It was Disney lyricist and legend Howard Ashman who saved this song from the cutting room floor, recognizing its importance to the story as a whole.

“Howard was like, ‘No,’ kind of over my dead body,” Benson added in the same interview. “We’ve got to have this song to be able to set up the whole story as to what she’s trying to achieve… I can’t imagine. Had that song been cut, I wouldn’t be here today.”

This song was certainly Benson’s shining moment in this film, especially given that she loses her voice for most of the story. If this song had been cut, the film would’ve likely been hard to follow. Luckily, in the end, the right choice was made, and this Disney classic was saved from potential failure.

(Photo by Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images)