Best song from an animated movie to be chosen in BBC Radio Two vote

BBC Radio Two is asking listeners to choose the Ultimate Animated Movie Song from the past 50 years.

OJ Borg will launch a listener vote on The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on Monday, sharing a shortlist of 50 songs.

The shortlist includes Elton John’s Can You Feel The Love Tonight from The Lion King and Pharrell Williams’ Happy from Despicable Me 2.

Other picks include:

– Dwayne Johnson’s You’re Welcome from Moana
– Robin Williams’ Prince Ali and Friend Like Me from Aladdin
– Kristen Bell’s Do You Want To Build A Snowman and Idina Menzel’s Let It Go from Frozen
– Billy Crystal and John Goodman’s If I Didn’t Have You from Monsters Inc
– Randy Newman’s You’ve Got A Friend In Me from Toy Story
– Birdy and Mumford & Sons collaboration Learn Me Right from Brave
– Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop The Feeling! from Trolls
– Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston’s rendition of When You Believe from The Prince Of Egypt

Borg said: “We’ve all loved watching animated films through our lives, and enjoyed the songs that have been in them.

“These are the songs we loved when we were kids and, when we are grown up, we start to get our own children into them. It’s just a joy every time you hear one.

“You realise you know every single word, and it brings back the childhood innocence, that joy of belting them out on car journeys with family and friends.

“But just what is the greatest of all the animated movie songs from the last 50 years?”

The shortlist was created by BBC Pop Radio’s movie critics James King, Rhianna Dhillon and Ali Plumb.

King said choosing the shortlist was “tough” but “so much fun”.

He added: “Some of the biggest songs of the last few years have been from animations and so many are just part of the fabric of pop culture. It was also great to revisit a few I’d forgotten about.”

Dhillon said: “We’ve all been reminiscing about the best magical, musical movie moments, but had to make some extremely tough decisions about which should make the shortlist. Hopefully, you’ll find your favourites in our shortlist and also discover some new ones too.”

Plumb added: “Songs from these movies are heard over and over again, not just in the cinema or on TV, but in the car, on the bus, wherever we are.

“There’s just something about them that bonds them close to our hearts, so it was a real pleasure to be part of the panel selecting the very best catchier-than-catchy animated movie earworms from the past half a century.

Borg will reveal the results of the vote in a Radio Two show on August 29, joined by guests who have written and sung some of the songs.

Laura Busson, commissioning executive for Radio Two, said: “The songs from animated movies are the anthems at the heart of so many of our listeners’ lives, and we can’t wait to see which one they crown their winner in a three-hour August bank holiday family special.”

The Ultimate Animated Movie Song vote will open at 7am on Monday and closes at 12pm on August 8.