Little Mermaid, big splash
our resident Kiss92 DJ/journo celebrates the 25th anniversary of The Little Mermaid with a look back at the greatest undersea music ever
COMMENTARY
So The Little Mermaid is a quarter century old.
It was 25 years ago this week that the classic cartoon musical was released on the big screen.
If that doesn't make you feel old, then I envy you.
There were some killer songs in the movie, but the one that really sticks in my memory is Under The Sea, the goofy one by Sebastian the crab.
"Under da sea / Under da sea / I'm a bed wetter / Don't need no sweater / Check out dat seaweed."
Anyway, something like that.
Of course the show-stopper that the ladies will remember most is Ariel's Part Of Your World.
It was the Let It Go of the 80s.
A young heroine's inspirational declaration of defiance, it expressed Ariel's heartfelt desire to escape her underwater world and become human.
Girls everywhere could relate to it, even if they didn't have fish tails.
The Little Mermaid was the film that dragged Disney out of a decades-long funk, and the music was a huge part of that.
It set the template for much of what's followed, including Frozen of course.
Thing is, The Little Mermaid is 100 per cent a girl movie.
It's even too girly for me, and I'm the guy who loves Twilight.
When it comes to mermaid music, I much prefer Jimi Hendrix's 1983...(A Merman I Should Turn To Be).
An extremely beautiful song from his third album Electric Ladyland, it's kind of the opposite of Part Of Your World in both style and substance.
Hendrix isn't a mermaid longing to be human; he's a human longing to escape the problems of the world and become a merman.
CLASSIC
"So down and down and down and down we go / Hurry my darlin' we mustn't be late for the show / Neptune champion games to an aqua world is so my dear / Right this way smiles a mermaid / I can hear Atlantis full of cheer."
It's a psychedelic classic.
On the lighter side, you can check out Lonely Island's I'm On A Boat featuring T-Pain.
T-Pain has a line about getting intimate with a mermaid that always leaves me in stitches.
Anyway, I'd like to say happy birthday to Ariel. Anyone who can rock a clamshell bra is okay by me.
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