One Really Cannot Ask if They Can Truly Understand Why Song Before Again Something
Why "Nosotros Don't Talk Most Bruno" Is the Biggest Disney Striking Since "Let It Get"
The TikTok favorite captures everything that makesEncanto great.
This week, "We Don't Talk About Bruno"—a song from the soundtrack to Disney'south latest blithe picture, Encanto—climbed toward the summit of the music charts, nestling itself among the likes of Lil Nas X and Adele on the Billboard Hot 100 and Spotify's virtually-played tracks. The song sets i of the film's dramatic climaxes, consisting of a revolving door of magical characters interjecting a whirlwind of melodies. It all culminates in the film's protagonist, Mirabel, piecing together ane of the movie's central mysteries: What's the deal with Bruno?
In that location are many aspects of this track contributing to its ascent popularity, weeks subsequently Encanto'southward release: Not just is the vocal narratively compelling, simply it's also a full bop. The music is a remarkable mixture of Broadway and Latin American influences, with a particularly distinctive rhythm. While the characters each sing the catchy and tight melodies we've come up to await from Lin-Manuel Miranda, they most always avoid singing on the vanquish. The song'south repeating bass line besides constantly teases our expectations; of the thirty notes that make up this lick, only 2 marshal with the beat! This pervasive off-the-crush-ness is precisely why we can't assistance grooving to this song; when music evades the beat, information technology evokes a feeling of motion in listeners, tugging on our own centers of gravity as information technology narrowly avoids congruent with where nosotros expect it to land.
The trajectory of "Nosotros Don't Talk Most Bruno" is as dramatic. The song rotates through a serial of verses, with different members of Mirabel'due south family each singing different melodies. However, unbeknownst to the listener, Miranda has composed each of these melodies to work together. As the song rips toward its climax, we hear a tornado of lines mashed together as the characters sing their individual melodies at the same time. The moment produces an unexpected and sensational musical loftier point, and it cleverly references similar overlapping dramatic pinnacles in Les Misérables, W Side Story, and fifty-fifty Sesame Street'due south famous breakfast conflict.
Just the song is more than than just a danceable and catchy melody. The film Encanto is well-nigh an enchanted family unit losing its magical powers due to some unseen force. As Mirabel struggles to understand this force, she interrogates each of her relatives nigh her absent, fortunetelling uncle Bruno. But the song isn't actually "about" Bruno in the same fashion the moving picture isn't really "virtually" magic. Instead, the picture is actually about unresolved intergenerational trauma (especially in migrant and politically oppressed cultures), while the vocal actually lays bare the characters' own frustrations, shortcomings, and prejudices.
For instance, the kickoff verse finds Mirabel's aunt Pepa and uncle Félix blaming Bruno for predicting rain at their wedding ceremony. Withal, Pepa'due south own magical powers control the atmospheric condition; the underlying pregnant backside her verse is less almost Bruno's alleged curse on her wedding, and more than about the couple's underlying frustrations with Pepa'due south inability to command her own ability ("in doing so he floods my brain").
Perhaps the most compelling moments in the song are those sung by Dolores, Mirabel's cousin, whose magical ears allow her to hear every move and conversation inside miles. The family, however, treats Dolores like a magical courier service, asking her but to mechanically report on events and ignoring her feelings and input. In "We Don't Talk About Bruno," Dolores' poetry recounts what she's heard and deduced about her supposedly absent uncle. In the scant nineteen seconds that she sings, her circuitous and roundabout lyrics reveal that she however hears Bruno around the house ("I can always hear him sort of muttering and mumbling") and that he tried to use his gift to help the family ("it's a heavy lift with a souvenir so humbling"), merely he became alienated from his mother and siblings when his prophecies failed to align with their expectations ("grappling with prophecies they couldn't understand"). Simply while Dolores drops these narrative bombshells, the music is too fast and too soft for us to fully understand her. Delivered at twice the speed of any other verse, she whispers her syllables (compare the total-throated Pepa with the muted Dolores), making her words difficult, if non impossible, to comprehend. By beingness also fast and also soft, the music cleverly forces the audience into the same relationship with Dolores that she has with the rest of the family: She is trying to tell us the truth about Bruno, but we're unable to fully empathise her.
As the track continues, the vocal embeds its own hidden musical prophecies. When Mirabel'southward too-perfect sister Isabela delivers her verse, she recounts Bruno's prediction that her own ability and happiness will continue to grow ("He told me that the life of my dreams … would anytime be mine"). While these lines initially seem boastful and vapid, this passage eventually plays a central role in Isabela's transformation later in the motion-picture show. In Isabela's song "What Else Can I Do?" Mirabel helps her sister realize that her life has been restricted by her family's unrealistic expectations ("What could I do if I just knew it didn't need to be perfect?"). As Isabela confesses "I'one thousand so sick of pretty, I want something true," Mirabel recapitulates her sister's verse from "We Don't Talk Nearly Bruno" to encourage Isabela to embrace her own wants and needs. Hither, Mirabel musically reinterprets Bruno's prophecy, showing Isabela how she tin finally accomplish "the life of her dreams."
Even the cardinal of "We Don't Talk Virtually Bruno" hides information well-nigh the plot's final resolution. The song is in the key of C—that is, the notation C serves as its key domicile pitch—a key that has already played an of import office in the soundtrack, with scenes that highlight familial love and connexion set in this key. In contrast, songs that highlight Mirabel'south growing distance from her family ("The Family Madrigal" and "Waiting on a Phenomenon") foreground the note C-sharp as a pitch one notation away from C; these moments musically show Mirabel beingness pulled away from her family's key of C. Conversely, when the family confronts its problems and trauma later in the picture show, the music moves back into the key of C. "What Else Can I Do?" moves to that primal during Isabela's crucial breakthrough, and Abuela (Mirabel'southward intransigent grandmother) has her ain breakthrough in the ballad "Dos Oruguitas" in that key. "Nosotros Don't Talk About Bruno" describes the family'due south issues while foreshadowing their solutions, and by using the primal of C, the music is making an explicit connection between these solutions and the ultimate resolutions of the family's trauma.
In a lot of ways, "We Don't Talk Near Bruno" is a surprising candidate for this distinction of the starting time Disney song since Frozen's megahit "Let Information technology Go" to reach the top five on Billboard's Hot 100. After all, it's not a honey carol, it's non a solo canticle, nor is it even in a mainstream pop mode. Just the vocal is then cool for so many reasons—musical, lyrical, and narrative—giving united states of america all many reasons to talk about (and sing nearly, and make TikToks about) "Nosotros Don't Talk About Bruno."
Correction, Jan. 13, 2022: This slice originally misspelled the name Mirabel.
Source: https://slate.com/culture/2022/01/encanto-soundtrack-we-dont-talk-about-bruno-tiktok.html
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