Lin-Manuel Miranda has written another hit for We Don't Talk About Bruno" unseating Frozen’s “Let It Go” as Disney’s highest-charting animated movie song on Billboard 100 since 1995.
Expanding his booming relationship with Disney, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the music and original songs for Encanto, along with contributing to the movie’s overall story. Miranda previously wrote the songs for Disney’s hit film Moana, including the incredibly popular musical number “How Far I’ll Go.” The Broadway composer also notably partnered with Disney in the filmed version of his hit 2016 musical Hamilton, which premiered on Disney+ to massive critical and audience acclaim in July 2020. Following the successes of Moana, Encanto, and Hamilton, Disney has also tasked Miranda with composing the songs for its live-action The Little Mermaid movie.
While Hamilton is apt to go down as Miranda’s greatest career accomplishment, his more recent musical ventures have taken some of the tricks that made his Broadway musical such a resounding success. The acclaim of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is partially due to one of Miranda’s best recurring musical features from Hamilton, namely his ability to beautifully infuse so many different musical styles and genres into one song. Hamilton’s groundbreaking musical was particularly notable for his infusion of rap and hip-hop, R&B, pop, soul, and classic Broadway elements. The diversity in musical style and their influences allowed Hamilton’s songs to reach a much broader audience with so many combined tastes, which is exactly what Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” repeats in its catchy rhythm.
What makes Encanto’s number even more powerful is that it blends pop, show-tune elements, and hip hop with Latin styles like guajira, thus drawing its most significant musical influence from the cultural background of the film. When Miranda combines the mix of musical genres with a polyphonic climax - as he does in Hamilton and Encanto - it’s inevitable such songs will be massive hits. Miranda so cleverly assigns his characters with different musical styles, making the climax of voices overlapping all the more distinctive, dynamic, and organic. Not all of these melodies should work together in one song, but Miranda is able to brilliantly find rhythms and themes relating to the musical’s characters and write them into a film-defining number like “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”
The polyphonic feature of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” in overlapping its musical styles is also what helped make the opening song “Alexander Hamilton” and the Act 1 closer “Non-Stop” so powerful in Hamilton; each brought the stories of each character with their respective musical styles and personalities, and mixed them all together while addressing a central mysterious figure. While the harmonization of the different voices colliding to give a bone-chilling climax is a common Broadway musical trait, Lin-Manuel Miranda is especially talented at combining the distinctive personalities and stories of the characters in a musically satisfying manner. That said, none of the Encanto characters’ voices or styles ever entirely blend together or overpower another, as they’re all singing from distinctive points of view with overlapping lyrics to bring the respective pieces of the narrative into one powerful harmony.
