

Some simply get earwormed by the whole song. It’s easy, then, for TikTok audiences to pick a different entry point into “Bruno” - lots of people start at the beginning, while others find Camilo’s “ 7-foot frame, rats along his back!” verse or Dolores’s furtive tiptoeing section to be the highlight. That structure in turn inadvertently makes “Bruno” a perfect song for TikTok virality because it’s broken into subsections by character, all of which are individually catchy. “On top of this,” he added, “the story within the song is streamlined enough as to take us to a thematic climax that is mirrored by the song’s musical climax: the moment in which all the previous verses reappear together simultaneously, almost as in a mashup.” It’s “simple” but “ingenious,” he told me - “a repetitive harmonic progression in C minor but which serves as a vehicle for different verses, each one exhibiting a unique melody, rhythm, timbre, texture, character and, over all, a distinct personality.” He agrees that the layered structure is the key to “Bruno’s” success. Sergio Ospina Romero is a musicologist at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and an affiliate of its Latin American Music Center.

But it’s the Latin stylistic influences that make the biggest impression. (They also get their own individualized choreography, based on Colombian folk dance and other Latin dances.) The musical theater influences on Miranda’s songwriting are obvious here as throughout the film. Miranda capitalizes on this affinity to great effect in “Bruno,” giving every character their own distinct perspective on Bruno and their own individual rhythmic pattern to match. This structure pairs extremely well with a common feature of musical theater in which each character has their own competing, even conflicting part within the same song. Every rhythmic pattern within those layers is distinct but equally important. Salsa music - the broad description for a wide variety of mainly Afro-Cuban musical styles - is built on rhythmic patterns that layer on top of each other to create the high-energy beats of Latin songs. But the combination of “Bruno” being a complex ensemble number meant to convey plot rather than general themes, as well as being a hit delivered primarily through TikTok rather than mainstream radio, thus spurring Encanto itself on to become a slow-burning sleeper hit for Disney, might need a little explaining. It’s not that unusual for the nerdier, less pop-flavored Disney hits to become beloved among fans. (Though “Bruno” is the film’s structural centerpiece, Disney chose a quieter ballad, “ Dos Oruguitas,” as Encanto’s Oscar submission for Best Song.)
RUSSIAN TIK TOK SONG MOVIE
10 on the Hot 100 as of January 25, making Encanto the first Disney film to produce multiple top 10 hits, while other songs from the movie are floating around lower down on the chart. “ Surface Pressure,” arguably the film’s best song, sits at No. The platform has fallen hard for “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” in particular, though Lin-Manuel Miranda’s song score for the animated musical has received plenty of love all around. The simple answer probably isn’t as surprising as it would have been a few years ago: TikTok, the platform that embraced and boosted such runaway viral hits as “ The Box,” “ Blinding Lights,” and that one sea shanty, has worked its magic on Encanto. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in its fourth week on the chart - making it the highest-charting Disney song since Aladdin’s 1993 hit “A Whole New World.” “Bruno” instead serves as the mouthpiece for a lovably dysfunctional Colombian family and their darkest plot-related secrets.īut despite, or perhaps because of, its weirdness, “Bruno” has passed them all, climbing even higher to land at No. The song, a classic musical theater ensemble number, is a lively, layered salsa about a creepy uncle and his habit of telling doom-and-gloom prophecies.īecause it relies heavily on the musical’s context, “Bruno” bears little resemblance to more typical Disney chart-toppers like “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” and “Colors of the Wind,” which were intentionally generic in order to serve as marketable hits for their films. Last week, the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Disney’s new sleeper hit Encanto surpassed Frozen’s smash hit “Let It Go” to become the highest-charting Disney single since 1995.
