Released eight years after the original and set three years later, the Disney animated musical
Moana 2
returns composer
Mark Mancina
and composer/songwriter
Opetaia Foa'i
to the fold but replaces Pulitzer Prize-winning songwriter
Lin-Manuel Miranda
with
Abigail Barlow
and
Emily Bear
. At the time of its release in November 2024, this made
Barlow
Bear
the youngest songwriting team and the first female songwriting team to write for a
Disney
film. After setting the scene with a new version of the brief "Tulou Tagaloa," performed by
Foa'i
with his group
Te Vaka
(who appear on and off throughout the track list),
get the song list started with "We're Back," which was co-written by
. When Moana -- performed again by
Auli'i Cravalho
-- eventually sets out on another life-threatening adventure ("Finding the Way," "What Could Be Better Than This?"), she has a plan to raise the sunken island of Motufetu in order to reconnect area island communities. Along the way, she encounters an old friend, the demigod Maui (
Dwayne Johnson
, who speak-sings the motivational "Can I Get a Chee Hoo?" and plaintive group song "Mana Vavau"). Later, Moana's deep connection to the sea and land is represented by
's "Nuku O Kaiga," a minute-long entry sung in Samoan and set against their modern take on traditional Polynesian music. Without giving away any more of the plot, suffice it to say that the soundtrack closes on a series of transformed reprises, and that the tweaked songwriting team get large assists from the returning
Cravalho
and the distinctive sounds of
. ~ Marcy Donelson