For the First Time in Forever
Every Disney Princess Movie has the ‘I Want’ song. Snow White sang “I’m Wishing”, Aurora sang “I Wonder” and Cinderella sang “A Dream is A Wish”. The modern princesses songs are even clearer with Ariel’s “Part of that World” and Belle’s “Belle” and “Belle Reprise”. Pocohantas sang about following her heart, Mulan lamented her inability to find her place, Tiana sang about her dreams and Rapunzel just wished for her life to begin. For Frozen the ‘I Want’ song is ‘For the First Time in Forever’. This is the fourth song in the film following ‘Vuelie’, ‘Frozen Heart’ and it follows fairly quickly after ‘Do you Wanna Build a Snowman?’ It acts as an introduction to Anna and Elsa as adults and sets the stage for the first act of the drama.
If you listen to the music a few times through (and by now, who hasn’t) you’ll notice that it’s actually a very complex piece of music. It has two themes working in contrast with each other. The first theme is Anna’s fast paced cheerful The Song opens with a fast paced, cheerful melody as Anna rushes through the castle, elated that ‘for the first time in forever’ she will have people to interact with. She hasn’t seen anyone outside of the palace servants in three years, and before that the only other people she saw were her parents and the servants. Its evident later that even after her parent’s deaths her interactions with Elsa were drastically limited. This isolation has resulted in a quirky awkwardness in Anna that is endearing and humorous. The lyrics in Anna’s sections of the song showcase these personality traits, as do the animation sequences. This portion also showcases Anna’s clumsiness as she slides down railings and takes out the suit of armor. It also showcases her fearlessness with her rooftop antics. It seems that Anna has taken to exploring every inch of her castle much like Rapunzel exploring every inch of her tower.
The second verse of the song also belongs to Anna and it introduces a very important plot point: Anna’s idea of the possibility of finding true love in one night. She admits that it’s a crazy idea but she has the whole scenario worked out in her own mind. She expects someone good looking, someone who will make her slightly nervous, who will dance with her and talk with her through the entire night. The song primes both Anna and us, as her audience, to look at Hans with his appearance and his actions at the ball and automatically think that this is the person Anna has been looking for. The last line in this verse sums up Anna’s deep need for someone to love her: “And I know that it’s totally crazy to think I’ll find romance, but for the first time in forever at least I’ve got a chance!”
The melody and tempo shift at this point as we move from Anna’s reactions to the day to Elsa’s. It’s the first time we really get to see Elsa as an adult. The damage done by years of isolation and fear is clearly visible from the way she walks to her words themselves. The idea of ‘conceal it, don’t feel it, don’t let it show’ has grown into something much deeper. She now equates her ability to conceal her powers with being a good girl, a good person. ‘Conceal it, don’t feel it’ has become ‘don’t let them in, don’t let them see’. She is terrified of herself and everyone else and is dreading the night before her as much as Anna is anticipating it. She has set her own personal standards so high, and put such personal weight on her ability to keep them, that her future failure is almost inevitable.
The song is all about the contrast between the sisters. Anna is hopeful that her own personal exile will be over while Elsa is terrified that hers won’t be. The way the two melodies play over each other in the final chorus of the song highlights this contrast with Anna’s melody expressing cheerful hope while Elsa’s melody begins to build the emotional turmoil expressed later on in ‘Let it Go’ and the reprise of this Song. In fact, both the lyrics and melodies Elsa sings in this song are repeated in the other two giving her storyline a unified musical theme. The contrast itself gives a feeling of tension as the lyrics the sisters sing begin to overlap. I especially love the moment when Elsa is singing ‘Don’t let them in, don’t let them know’ just as Anna begins to sing ‘I know it all ends tomorrow’. A few moments before ‘Snowman’ had set up the interpersonal conflict between Anna and Elsa in a few short verses, and now ‘For the First time in forever’ sets up the rest of the conflicts of the film.
The song also features two Easter Eggs: Rapunzel and Eugene Fitzherbert from the Kingdom of Corona and chocolates from Sugar Rush. You can read more about the Easter Eggs I’ve found in the movie (and on the Blu Ray (and DVD) HERE.