Criticize Moana 2 songs all you like, say songwriters: "Give it a month, all the kids will be singing it"

In remarks that we can’t help but read as being halfway between a brag and an outright threat, the writers of the songs for the Moana 2 soundtrack are now promising to infect the minds of America’s children. “Give it a month, all the kids will be singing it,” songwriter Abigail Barlow said of her music, when asked about the slightly muted response to the movie’s tunes.

And, look: It’s not like Moana 2 needs help right now. Despite having been kludged together from scrapped plans for a Disney+ TV series, the film did ridiculously well at the box office over the Thanksgiving weekend, bringing in more than $400 million planetwide. But critics were a lot harsher on almost every aspect of the sequel, including the songs. (A.V. Club film editor Jacob Oller, in his C+ review of the movie, drubbed Barlow and co-writer Emily Bear’s contributions as “forgettable songs, ranging from truly terrible shipwrecks to embarrassing Lin-Manuel Miranda tribute band tracks.”)

Barlow, at least, seems convinced that the new songs are headed for “Let It Go” status, though, telling Variety that they will soon be everywhere, and “You’ll be tired of it.” Bear, meanwhile, hedged a bit more, stating that, “I would say that everyone has an opinion. Writing a sequel is really difficult because obviously, you’re never going to be able to recreate the feeling of the first one. And so, people like what they know, and this is new. So, of course, they’re going to have opinions. And, I don’t know…music is subjective.”

Barlow and Bear first came to prominence through their work on Grammy winner The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical. According to their conversation with Variety, they had ready access to Miranda, who wrote the songs for the original Moana, saying he gave them lots of advice and was always just a “Facetime call away.”