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History of Disney Songs with Kristen Bell

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Jimmy Fallon and Kristen Bell just turned late night into a Disney sing-along marathon.

On the November 12, 2019 broadcast of NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, host Jimmy Fallon and Kristen Bell — the voice of Princess Anna in Disney’s Frozen franchise — teamed up for a live five-minute musical segment called “The History of Disney Songs.” Backed by The Roots, the pair barreled through 17 tracks spanning eight decades of Disney’s animated catalog, timed to build buzz ahead of Frozen 2‘s theatrical release. What started as a straightforward medley turned into a running bit, several costume changes, and a standing ovation from the studio audience.

• The unbroken medley opened chronologically with 1940’s “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Pinocchio before moving through “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “Heigh-Ho” and “The Bare Necessities.”
• Fallon repeatedly derailed Bell’s performance of Pocahontas’s “Colors of the Wind” by breaking in with “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”
• The segment closed on a Frozen finale, with Fallon attempting Elsa’s new high belt on “Into the Unknown” before the two joined together for the climactic refrain of “Let It Go.”

A Chronological Sprint Through Eight Decades

The bit was structured like a mini history lecture set to music, and Fallon and Bell played it that way. After the Golden Age trio of “When You Wish Upon a Star,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and “Heigh-Ho,” they landed on “The Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book before pivoting into the Disney Renaissance stretch of the ’80s and ’90s — the run of films that produced most of the songbook casual fans actually know by heart.

That’s where the props came out. Bell and Fallon stepped onto a moving carpet with a wind machine blasting for “A Whole New World,” hoisted a plush Simba toy for “Circle of Life,” and later strapped on skeleton chest-plates for Pixar’s “Remember Me” from Coco. The Little Mermaid got a two-song showcase with “Under the Sea” and “Part of Your World,” while “Beauty and the Beast” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” rounded out the run before Toy Story’s “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and Moana’s “How Far I’ll Go” carried the medley into the 2010s.

The Snowman Bit That Wouldn’t Quit

The funniest stretch of the sketch had nothing to do with the singing itself. Every time Bell tried to get through Pocahontas’s “Colors of the Wind,” Fallon cut her off by launching into “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” — the Frozen song sung by a young Anna outside Elsa’s locked bedroom door. Bell kept trying to restart the number, Fallon kept interrupting, and the gag ran long enough that it became its own punchline inside a segment that was already packed wall-to-wall with music.

Fallon tried to hit Elsa’s new high notes on “Into the Unknown” before handing the refrain over to Bell for “Let It Go.”

The Frozen Finale

The medley built toward its own franchise the whole time. Bell, who has voiced Anna since the original 2013 Frozen, closed the segment with Fallon on the two songs anchoring the sequel’s promotional push — “Into the Unknown,” Elsa’s new anthem written for Frozen 2, and “Let It Go,” the 2013 song that turned the character into a global phenomenon. Fallon took a swing at the belt notes on “Into the Unknown” before the two joined voices for the climactic refrain of “Let It Go,” which brought the studio audience to its feet.

The full segment aired on The Tonight Show, which taped from its usual home base described in the network’s own coverage of Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show’s return to Rockefeller Center, and it slotted the sketch into a late-night landscape where musical mashups have become a reliable ratings draw — the kind of segment that tends to circulate widely once clipped for Trending Music roundups the next morning.

Frozen 2 opens in theaters on November 22, 2019, and this sketch was Bell’s biggest solo promotional stop before the release — a five-minute victory lap through the songbook that made her famous, capped by a song nobody outside Disney had heard the full studio version of yet.