When Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear were asked to write original music for Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Moana 2, the GRAMMY® Award winners were overflowing with ideas. After all, the prodigious pair had seen the original film in theaters and were as curious as any other fan about what new adventures might await Moana, Maui, and the people of Motunui.
“It’s a crazy honor,” Barlow, who was a high school student when Moana was released in theaters in 2016, says of writing songs for the sequel. “To think that children all over the world are going to hear these songs and want to sing them is like something out of a dream.”
Professionally known as Barlow & Bear, they are the first all-female writing team to create all the songs for an animated Disney feature film and the youngest composers to do so. And, because they are similar in age to Moana, they were uniquely qualified to tell the character’s story — all of her biggest dreams, emotions, fears, and hopes — through music.
“It’s funny, because when we first got hired on this, I really was not that much older than Moana is in the story,” Bear says. “To be able to write for a peer and really identify our struggles and ourselves in her made it really easy for us to step into the shoes of Moana.”
Directed by Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller, and David Derrick Jr., produced by Yvett Merino and Christina Chen, and written by Jared Bush and Miller, Moana 2 finds Moana scouring the far seas of Oceania — in dangerous, long-lost waters — to unite communities.
“She’s a little older, a little wiser — three years, to be exact,” Barlow says. Because everything in Moana’s world has only gotten “bigger” over time, the music needed to reflect that: “We wanted to show that evolution not only in the music, but in the lyrics.”
“Every character that we’ve met in Moana has changed and grown: Maui’s changed, Tui has changed, and Moana has changed,” adds Bear, citing songs such as “Beyond,” “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?,” and “We’re Back” as examples of that evolution. “We also got to write music for the new characters, which was really, really fun, because we got to create a new sound.”
So, what was it like to write music for Moana 2 — which shattered box office records in its debut weekend?
“It’s like dreaming in the middle of the day,” Barlow says in an interview at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, California. “It doesn’t matter what kind of day you’re having when you walk into this building; none of it matters… To be part of the Disney legacy, there’s nothing else like it.” Reflecting on it further, being asked to write music for Moana 2 “has been an incredible experience” Barlow won’t soon forget: “I think I’m a better writer because of this project.”
As a lifelong Disney Animation fan, Bear especially relished working with the filmmakers and getting a behind-the-scenes look at all the movie magic.
“It was so cool to watch their brains work and see them dissect things and tear them apart and put them back together. To be a part of those conversations, and to have the music be such an important role in the storytelling process, was crazy,” Bear says. “We grew up on Disney music, just like everyone else. Our story is not unique [in that way], but it is the soundtrack of our lives. For us to see the inner workings of how something like this is made is surreal.”
With Disney Animation’s Moana 2 now playing in theaters, Bear hopes audiences feel as if they’re embarking on the journey along with Moana.
“This world, both sonically and visually, is so all-encompassing,” she says. “It’s so lush and rich. I think that’s why the first one did what it did, because it took you out of where you were and brought you to someplace you would have never, ever been able to go to otherwise. So, I hope Moana 2 brings you back to that place.”