Soundtrack Sidetracked: Disney's Descendants 2

Disney's Descendants came out in July of 2015, to about as much acclaim as a Disney Channel movie can get that's not called High School Musical.

Simply put, the sons and daughters of certain villains are chosen to go to Auradon Prep with the children of heroes and good princesses. It has (had?) webisodes and books.

Sounds familiar (& more competently distributed, maintained, and diverse) to a certain Mattel property, doesn't it?

With any property like this, Disney will push one of the stars to be the Next Big Thing. Here, it's Sofia Carson, who plays Evie (the blue girl). Disney loves reusing it's stars though - Dove Cameron (Mal; The purple girl) stars in Liv and Maddie as...both of them, and China Anne McClain was the lead in ANT Farm.

(China voices a completely different character than Uma in the animated show.   My friend just informed me that her sister voices Freddie in the show now. I have no idea when that happened. If there's one thing this franchise royally messed up with, it's the continuity between mediums. There's plenty of characters with dolls and webisode and book presence that have no mention in the movies.)

Interestingly, quite a few characters ended up being written out - there was a son of Aladdin and Jasmine who was even cast and costumed but never made it into any film, a daughter of Rapunzel, and Audrey, daughter of Aurora - The Sleeping Beauty.

She was actually the "antagonist" of the first movie. I say that, lightly, because villain is too strong. Audrey was simply upset and confused at a bunch of uncouth kids showing up to her doorstep without even trying to fit in or learn...and then her boyfriend falls for the lead? Hoo boy.

She doesn't appear in any capacity in the sequel. I think they say she's on a carriage ride through a forest for the duration.

I'm not here to recount the stories of either movie to you too deeply - it's so nonsensical and foolish that I'd have to refresh my memory to be accurate - but they are both very good fun, goofy times.

Why am I looking at the soundtrack of this instead of the first movie? Well...I only like two songs from the first movie - Evil Like Me and Rotten To the Core. Technically, it's just one, seeing as the latter is a cover of one of the songs by Sofia Carson.

There were also songs that didn't make the final cut - covers of Poor Unfortunate Souls and Kiss the Girl, from The Little Mermaid.




Personally, I'm not fond of them. I think if they let China do a simple cover of PUS (ha) instead of embellishing it with modern day noises, it would have been pretty good. This? No.

Actually, I don't think any covers of old Disney songs make it into this movie.

The first one...blessed us...with a very strange cover of Be Our Guest. Perhaps the director heard our confused cries and gratefully let these stay on the soundtrack but out of the film.

So, with all that said, let's go. I'm going to try and do these in the order they appear - but the soundtrack involves songs that were webisode-exclusive, and I've got to remember what those are to avoid them. The only one worth listening to is Rather Be With You anyway.

The first song - and first song released period for this soundtrack - is by far my favorite. Premiering an entire three months before the movie or the rest of the soundtrack, here's Ways to Be Wicked;

"Long live 

having some fun,

we take what we want,

there's so many ways to be wicked."

This is actually extended in the beginning from the one that gets radio play. Well, Radio Disney play.

Don't get too excited at the movie clips they show. It's a daydream. Yeah, the best song in the movie is with Mal daydreaming that she wishes she could be herself instead of struggling to be a super princess.

The song is a humongous improvement over the in-movie version of Rotten to the Core from 2015, which had a lot of shitty techno effects added in and some very awkward dance scenes that only Cameron Boyce could do correctly.

I love the thumping, brassy horn that's so present.

Next - What's My Name - the villain song for Uma, daughter of Ursula;

"I call the shots,

You know who I am."

I think more of the quality went into Uma's songs than anyone else's. I adore so many of the lyrics;

Tell 'em who's in charge so they don't forget! ( I find myself singing this all the time)

Stand up to me, you don't stand a chance.

And leaving us behind will be the last regret!

The bridge to the end with Harry Hook. Actually, he steals the entire movie.

It fits her personality, theme, and attitude. China Anne McClain sings it competently. I've always liked her music, especially the Halloween hit Calling All the Monsters from like 2011.

Most of the singing is improved slightly - not that you'd know it with the guys, they get a few lines in the next song. I won't pretend that it doesn't sound overproduced but it's not irritating like in the covers of the songs that didn't make the visual cut. Maybe because this is wholly original.

Next, we're kicking it back to something that sounds very Michael Jackson esque; Chillin' Like A Villain -

"I really gotta thank you for the help,

I think I found the worst of myself."

The song is completely different than anything you'd expect a tween-oriented channel to create. I like that they attempted this - and to me, they succeeded!

It's not unheard of for Disney shows to branch from overproduced starlet pop song - Elena of Avalor's songs are much more in the vein of music from South America, Mexico, and Spain. The Lion Guard uses a lot instruments and styles from countries in Africa. But I can't remember the last time I saw Disney pull this late disco-era earworm.

The radio play version edits out much of the stomping that happens in the video, which I understand. But I like the stomping.

Let's be real, this next one, Space Between, is a love ballad. After all, they are the colors of the bisexual flag.

"You can find me in the space between,
something something really poor sound mixing"

The sound mixing is so bad, I can't understand some of the lyrics. Turn the instrumental down!

Luckily, It's Goin' Down is a rap battle, and doesn't have that problem.

"Who's the baddest of them all?

I guess we're finding out tonight."

First up; Round of applause for Disney doing the bare minimum and not putting  Mal in a blaccent to do this. Her parts don't sound lively or enthused at all - but I guess she'd have no reason to be - but at least it's not racist.

I wish I could find an instrumental of this, I think it's the best one by far. I also like how the chorus turns into something reminiscent of a Broadway show with a chorus breaking out. There's something about the tone and clarity that gives it that impression to me.

You and Me is so weirdly a 90's ballad sung by white R&B singers.  It's four minutes of incredibly reedy voices that are produced to hell and back.


If you couldn't tell, the songs I had little to say about were usually Mal oriented - it wasn't a personal thing, but I don't quite like her voice as much as I did in Evil Like Me, where you can really hear that it wasn't perfect.

Overall, I think this soundtrack is, again, a humongous improvement. Not perfect, but much better.

This was a pretty enjoyable little side thing to do; I'm definitely going to do this again, the thing is picking the soundtrack; Trolls, Rio 2, Moana, Into the Woods, Chicago...