Whenever Disney releases an animated film you usually expect there to be a few songs thrown in. That is how things have been for nearly 100 years of making movies for the company. There are a few exceptions like Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet, but you can almost always expect a handful of musical numbers.

Well what if I told you there was a brief period where Disney added new songs to films that were already years old?

The brief trend began in 2002 when the “Special Edition” of 1991’s Beauty and the Beast was released on DVD. While they were originally making the film there was a song called “Human Again” that was cut from the original version due to pacing issues but was included in the 1994 Broadway version. The song takes place right after the song “Something There” and just before the song “Tale As Old as Time”.

Producer Don Hahn said in an interview: “Kirk (Wise) and Gary (Trousdale) and I were sitting around talking about the ‘Star Was: Special Editions’ that had just come out and Kirk jokingly suggested, ‘wouldn’t it be fun to do a special edition of Beauty with Human Again or new material in it?’ When the head of Feature Animation said he thought it was a great idea, we stopped joking and began thinking about how we could actually do it. We had storyboarded the sequence for the original production, but completely reworked it for this special edition of the film.“

The Special Edition was released in 2002 and some critics claimed that the added song threw off the pace and felt unnecessary. Not to mention some of the lighting from the original film was adjusted to match the newer animation; So some scenes, like the Beast hiding in the shadows, felt more lit compared to the original cut.

In 2003 they would do this again but with a more recent film, that being 1994’s The Lion King.

Though instead of adding in a song that was originally cut from the film a completely new song was written and recorded.

The song was called “The Morning Report” and had Zazu give his report to King Mufasa in song instead of normal from the original cut. Rowen Atkinson was unavailable to sing the song so veteran voice actor Jeff Bennet sang it instead. Jason Weaver, child Simba’s original singing voice, was too old so his part was sung by Evan Saucedo.

The song was of course met with similar criticism as “Human Again” was; Unnecessary and threw off the pace. But at least it was a brand new song instead of adding the infamous “The Madness of King Scar” number back into the film.

Fan Recreation of the deleted song “The Madness of King Scar” courtesy of Eduardo Quintana on YouTube.

After 2003 the trend died out with no trace of coming back. Future physical editions of the films removed the added songs and were only available via the “Bonus Features” options. Neither song was included in the Live Action Remakes of their respected films either.

But it does beg the question, what if Disney hadn’t stopped?

What if they had continued this trend and added other song into films like The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan and others? Those films did of course have scrapped musical numbers, so imagine if they had used that as a reason to re-sell you the same movie but with a new song. Imagine a sticker on the package saying “All New Never Before Seen Musical Number!”.

Honestly it was probably best for them to stop this trend. We were already dealing with the tidal wave of direct-to-video sequels at that time.

But what do you think? Would you have wanted more songs added to these classic movies? Or are you glad they stopped after two tries?