How Barlow & Bear ended up scoring 'Moana 2' — and made history in the process

Pianos also anchor Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear's Los Angeles apartments. Self-proclaimed “Barbie girl” Barlow, 25, has a glossy magenta lacquered Yamaha U1 as bright as her hair and impressive Stanley mug. The upright Steinway – a restored turn-of-the-century example bought from “a random downtown warehouse” – belongs to 23-year-old Bear.

It would be tempting to assume that the two musicians are polar opposites, based on their instruments as well as their histories. Barlow is a pop singer and songwriter who first dreamed of becoming “a musical theater actress“? Bear was a wunderkind classical and jazz pianist, protégé of Quincy Jones who played for Beyoncé in Renaissance tour and intended to write film/television scores. And while both entered the industry in their teens, it wasn't until a mutual friend introduced them in 2019 that they started writing songs together. Their creative partnership (and friendship) has been, as Barlow says, “just like alchemy,” ever since.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Barlow & Bear wrote The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical albuminspired by the book series and the Netflix theatrical drama, which became a viral sensation, garnering 60.3 million on-demand streams in the US, according to Luminate, and earning the duo a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater album in 2022. ( (Netflix sued the pair that July for copyright infringement when they did a live, profit-making performance of the album at the Kennedy Center, a lawsuit that was reportedly settled out of court a few months later.) But now, their collaboration is about to hit the mainstream. Barlow & Bear's music for Moana 2in theaters Nov. 27, will make them the youngest (and only female) songwriting duo to create a full soundtrack for a Disney animated feature. Two of their songs – “Beyond,” an impressive showcase for star Auli'i Cravalho (Moana), and “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?” for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (Maui) — will be submitted, Disney reveals, for Oscar consideration.

Like much of the musical theater-loving world, Walt Disney Music president Tom MacDougall first became aware of Barlow & Bear as a group through Bridgerton. (For Bear, it was also a full-circle moment: As an 8-year-old pianist, she had met MacDougall, who gave her a Tangled score signed by famed composer Alan Menken that still hangs on her wall.) About three years ago, she met them for lunch to “put it on our radar that she might have a project for us,” Barlow recalls. She and Bear didn't expect much to come of it – but MacDougall was impressed by the narrative in their story Bridgerton music. “That spirit of deciding to musicalize this thing that wasn't a musical gave me the confidence that they could pull off [a Disney film] away,” he says. “If they could create the spirit to create songs where there wasn't any, I had a good feeling that if we gave them moments to create songs around them, they would be able to deliver.”

A year later, in 2022, Barlow & Bear met with the creative team for Moana 2 — a sequel to the 2016 animated film about the titular young lady who sets out to save her Polynesian island — which was later picked up as a Disney+ streaming series. “Both of us, strangely enough, were going through similar struggles to what Moana is facing on this new journey,” Bear explains. “It was easy to put ourselves in her shoes and understand that she's just a young woman trying to find her place in the world, just like us.”

Around the middle of last year, Disney reconsidered Moana 2 as a feature film — so Barlow & Bear immersed themselves in learning the ropes of composing for Disney, absorbing some of their imparted wisdom Moana composer predecessor, Lin-Manuel Miranda; “He gave me a stack of books on how to structure a verse so that it's not only narratively-accurate, but also so that it rolls off the tongue, flies off the page and into people's minds and hearts,” Barlow says. .

For her part, Bear fell into the treasure trove of foundational material from Moana from their soundtrack bandmates, composers Opetaia Foa'i (a Samoan-born singer whose Polynesian music group, Te Vaka, plays on both Moana soundtrack) and Mark Mancina. “They recorded a huge library of logs and skins and vocal samples, so there were grooves that inspired whole songs,” says Bear. “Even if we started or wrote a song ourselves, the root of it was still Opie.”

Although Barlow and Bear admit they are working Moana 2 they still feel surreal, they don't have much time to enjoy it: They're booked and busy, in part because of that Grammy win. But both say the award's significance to them was more symbolic. “We've grown a lot as people overall [Bridgerton] The process and becoming a 'mature, professional girl' was something my soul desperately wanted and needed,” says Barlow. Bear agrees. “I've done a lot, but mostly as a kid, and for some reason I felt like it didn't really count. I have worked so hard to overcome the 'miracle' label,” he says. “[The Grammy] it was really big for me because it was the first time people judged me based on the music I made as an adult.”

The post-Moana 2 The slate as a duo includes the upcoming Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers biopic starring Jamie Bell and Margaret Qualey and their first stage musical, which is in development with a creative team. Bear (who is also an Emmy winner for her music for the PBS documentary Life) has scored two upcoming films: Anderson .Paak's feature debut, K-Popsand Our Little Secreta Netflix Christmas movie starring Lindsay Lohan. Barlow, with a laugh, says she may soon “release the album I wrote a year and a half ago.”

And then there's the mysterious “little musical idea” that brought them together, a “very heavily produced” show “that brings you down to what pop musical theater can be… which is very dear to us,” says Barlow with an informed smile. It's a reminder of the excitement they felt when they first met – and still feel in any session together. “We're in love, musically,” says Barlow, “really.”

This story appears in the October 26, 2024 issue Bulletin board.