Soundtrack Review – “Tangled: The Series”

Tangled: The Series premiered in March and instantly delighted fans of Rapunzel with fun new adventures on Disney Channel. The high-quality production reassembled most of the film’s voice cast with an animation style reminiscent of the Lisa Keane end credits and as an added bonus, contained new music from Alan Menken and Glenn Slater. The first season just wrapped and to celebrate, Walt Disney Records is releasing all of the songs from the series so far with the Tangled: The Series Soundtrack.

The soundtrack collects all eleven songs from all of the episodes, the majority of which come from the three hour-long episodes (Tangled: Before Ever AfterQueen for a Day, and Secret of the Sundrop). In addition to Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi, Broadway stars Eden Espinosa and Jeremy Jordan joined the cast and get lots of vocal time on this soundtrack as well.

The first three tracks come from the TV movie that started the series, including the full version of the series’ theme song, “Wind in My Hair” and its reprise. As good as the theme song is, “Life After Happily Ever After” is my personal favorite from Tangled: Before Ever After. From Queen for a Day comes the catchy “I Got This” and Jeremy Jordan’s power balad, “Let Me Make You Proud” (with a reprise right after it).

Two episodes in the series featured singular songs and they’re next up. “Friendship Song” is performed by Brennley Brown from the episode Pascal’s Story, a fun song with a 1960’s pop feel. The other is “Listen Up” from the episode The Wrath of Ruthless Ruth, performed by Danielle Brooks. More than any other song in the collection, this one reminds me of Menken and Slater’s music for Galavant.

From the season finale, Secret of the Sundrop, comes two additional songs. “Set Yourself Free” is another song for Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) that feels like a close relative of “When Will My Life Begin” and “Wind in My Hair.” The final episodic song is “Ready as I’ll Ever Be,” the song from the epic showdown at the end of the season, sung by pretty much the entire cast.

The soundtrack ends like every episode, with “More of Me” by Natasha Bedingfield. It’s the only song on the album not written by Menken and Slater, but very catchy and it’s nice to hear verses and lyrics that aren’t in the closing of each episode. It’s the most contemporary song in the mix, but still feels at home with the others.

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have songs from Tangled: The Series stuck in my head pretty much since the series debuted. While several of these songs have been available as digital singles, it’s great to finally have them all available in one collection. Tangled: The Series Soundtrack is now available digitally for fans to play repeatedly until season two begins later this year.

Alex Reif
Alex joined the Laughing Place team in 2014 and has been a lifelong Disney fan. His main beats for LP are Disney-branded movies, TV shows, books, music and toys. He recently became a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA).