No wonder Bailey’s rendition of “Part of Your World” is sprinkled with angelic riffs and strategic voice breaks - choices made, in apprehension, when performing the song during her audition for the part of Ariel in early 2019. In embracing her own turn - her first major film role, and her first project apart from her sister, Chlöe Bailey - the multi-hyphenate talent has faced a gauntlet of challenges: a technically intense shoot, a protective fan base, racist abuse and the demands of adding dimension to a beloved character, sometimes without being able to say a word. The song’s questions assume new urgency, as if this Ariel, her Ariel, were desperate for answers.Īnd perhaps she is. In Disney’s live-action remake, opening May 26, Halle Bailey, taking on the role that a million aspiring princes and princesses sung along to, attacks the song’s climax with a powerful ascending vibrato, and holds on long after the orchestra drops out. In the 1989 animated classic “The Little Mermaid,” Jodi Benson‘s Ariel delivers the lyrics with a wistful, resigned sigh, as if the number were a prayer the undersea princess had repeated too many times to count. All of them building to the ultimate ask: “When’s it my turn?” What the word is for that thing fire does. What it costs to spend a day on the sand. “Part of Your World” is a song of questions.
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