When it comes to music in cinema, nobody does it like Disney does. Over the years Disney has brought us beautiful medleys, sweet and sinister villain songs, and jams that are just fun and silly. They’ve had many smash hits such as The Lion King’s “Can you feel the love tonight”, Aladdin’s “A Whole New World”, and more recent songs like Moana’s “How Far I’ll Go” and the renowned hit “Let It Go” from Frozen. In “Let It Go”’s heyday it topped at the number five spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making it the highest charting Disney song since Aladdin’s “A Whole New World”. The song reigned for eight years completely untouched, until it was recently knocked off it’s throne by a song from Disney’s newest film, Encanto, titled “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number one, the first Disney movie to do so in 29 years.

Encanto itself is a delightful story focused on the magical Madrigal family who live in an enchanted house where each member  possesses a gift except for our protagonist, Mirabel Madrigal. The film focuses on saving the family’s magic and finding their missing uncle, Bruno Madrigal. Bruno was gifted with the ability to see the future, but his visions were often bad so he was considered bad luck and more or less looked down upon by his family and the village. 

The night Mirabel doesn’t get a gift, Abuela asks Bruno to look into the future and see what it means, and Bruno sees cracks in the house with Mirabel in the middle of it all, but the vision was unclear, no definite answer that Mirabel destroys or saves the magic. Regardless of the possibility that she could save the miracle, Bruno decides to leave because of his bad luck reputation, assuming how the family will interpret his vision. His leaving the family is seen as an act of betrayal, and causes the family to try to forget him, using the phrase “We don’t talk about Bruno” any time he is brought up.

However, when the magic starts fading Mirabel decides she needs to save it to prove herself to her Abuela so she goes looking for Bruno’s vision and finds it in his abandoned room. She sees herself in the vision and is confused on its exact meaning so she consults her Aunt Pepa about what Bruno’s visions usually meant, launching into the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”, in which the family and some villagers explain how Bruno’s visions personally affected them. The song along with the rest of the music in the movie was written by Hamilton star and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda but “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” shines far above the rest. The song is so popular that most (including myself) heard the song long before they watched the movie, so that should fix any doubts about how good the song actually is.

Encanto was truly a beautiful film, but without the music it wouldn’t be able to attain the amount of fans the soundtrack brought. Lin-Manuel Miranda brought the story to life through the amazing songs he wrote for the movie, and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is only one of them. As the future marches on Disney will no doubt continue to deliver new and exciting music to us, frequently demonstrating how much they deserve their spot at the top, and continue to show that nobody does it like they do.