Mr. Lopez, what is the most joyful part of songwriting for you: when you arrive to the blank page and start to work on creating something, or when you finally hear your finished song in a film?
Hearing the finished song in a film can be very fulfilling, but at that point you’ve kind of given over control to others and then you’re quite helpless, especially when you’re in the room with the audience and they get to decide whether it works or not. And then the moment you mentioned where you’ve just started, when you’re negotiating the beginning of the process, there’s always a bit of jockeying that happens between me and my partner, Kristen. There’s also a little fear. So for me, the fun part is when you settle into songwriting, and you realize, “Oh, this is going to be good!” You see in your mind what it could be and you start to play — that’s the most fun.
Together, you and your wife and songwriting partner Kristen Anderson-Lopez have written Oscar-winning song like “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen and “Remember Me” from Coco. How has that collaboration developed over the past 20 years working together?
I’ve written more songs with Kristen than anyone else! Our process has evolved to the point where I enjoy the work so much, whereas I used to feel that songwriting was something like a gauntlet that I had to walk through, that I started to almost dread. And part of that is just realizing that people are more important than work — even though work is very important, the person you’re in the room with is always more valuable than any work. And that switch, I think, allowed me to feel better about writing, and it allowed me to access joy in a way that, frankly, I need to in order to make this career sustainable. Because if you’re constantly dreading doing your work, you’re going to want to do less and less of it, which I had felt several times before we worked together.
“Through music you can communicate with people’s souls, you can help them. You give them this emotional experience, and the response you get back is tenfold.”
That joy is really reflected in your songs.
Yeah, I think together we have a different voice that is very much about being in love, being parents, being a family. And we have the experience of having two daughters and watching Disney movies with them, and having that return to childhood that you get when you’re a young parent. Disney was really on the bucket list for me, I was really hoping that we can get to work with them because there really was nothing like watching those films from that time period, Tangled and Wreck It Ralph and Ratatouille and Toy Story, all these amazing family uniting experiences that were just thrilling, and you cried and laughed… It was just a wonderful thing and it was something I’d always wanted to write.
Kristen once said that you two want to write songs that make people feel less alone. Would you say that’s true?
Absolutely. I think when you’re young, you think making art is about calling attention to yourself, saying, “Look what I can do.” But in college, I studied Shakespeare, and my senior year work was all about music in The Tempest. And I read all about the Renaissance and medieval ideas of what music was: they believed music was a kind of spirit related to the soul, like your soul emerged from your body and in breath or on the wind, this spirit would travel. And because everyone’s souls were made of air, music could directly communicate with the souls of others. And I believe in that kind of magic. I think that through music you can communicate with people’s souls, you can help them. You give them this emotional experience, and the response you get back is tenfold. So when I started thinking about my work in that way, I had a lot more success than when I was just trying to impress people with what I could do, or when I was trying to be Stephen Sondheim. (Laughs)
When did you make that switch and start developing your own voice?
Growing up I fell in love with Stephen Sondheim when I saw Follies in concert on television. That was it! I was like, “This is the guy. I want to be him.” And so my very first musical theater songs were very much Sondheim-esque. I was just trying to imitate him, as you do when you’re a teenager, you do your best impression of your heroes, which is not a bad thing. But as I got older and became an adult, I got more and more feedback that you can’t just imitate Steve. Steve is Steve, and you have to be you. I had a little mini crisis of, “Why am I doing this? What is this for? Who do I want to be?”
Is that when you discovered the more comic sensibilities that we see in your earlier work like Avenue Q?
Well, in college, I was part of a singing group that had a lot of humor attached to it, and I wrote jokes for them, I created characters, so music and humor had actually always gone together for me in a way. I’d always wanted to write a show that was funny, laugh out loud from beginning to end. And then [South Park creators] Matt Stone and Trey Parker came out with Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, which is really like a masterpiece of a movie musical. I saw what could be done in terms of combining comedy with heart and societal redemption. So Avenue Q was really born out of a desire to reach out to people like myself, who were struggling in their twenties and feeling the existential dread.
And eventually Avenue Q moved from off-Broadway to Broadway, and earned you your first Tony award.
That was completely surprising! As a young songwriter and composer, I was very aware that it was kind of a dumb thing to devote yourself to. I imagined that I would have to struggle with money my whole life. I was reconciled to that from an early age. I thought, you know, I’m never going to really be that successful, but I’m hopefully I’m gonna feel fulfilled. I just really wanted to write. So when Avenue Q went to Broadway and I found mainstream success… That was never part of the plan. It was incredibly surprising.
How did that first Tony win change things for you? Obviously it really popularized that current show, but I think those accolades are also great for your future work as well. It puts you on a next level.
That’s how I look at them, too. On some level, they are meaningless. But on another level, and I’m certainly a beneficiary of this, they give everyone permission to work with you without feeling like they’re risking something. Yeah, my career definitely took off after the Tony win. We were able to get into rooms, we were able to meet all sorts of people, it was a really exciting ride.
“Music was an escape and a way to express my own feelings and show people who I am.”
I guess it also meant that you were able to take more risks with your next project, Book of Mormon, right?
I always thought taking risks was important, and that there was something important with the audacity of an idea, that the better the idea is, the more chance your talent can pull it off. If the idea itself is compelling, you’re halfway there. I’d already wanted to write something about religion, that was one of the bucket list items that was already percolating. So when Matt Stone and Trey Parker came to see Avenue Q, we had a drink afterwards, and as I said, I loved South Park so the kind of humor that they used… That stuff still lives in me. I really wanted to write something in that direction. And they loved Avenue Q, they had all these feelings drummed up by puppets, you know, so that was the reason they wanted to do something together. We really had a meeting of the spirits because Trey wanted to write emotional stuff and I wanted to do some of the more humorous stuff. It was a way that we could really imitate each other and elevate our work. And Book of Mormon was born.
How was it to get quite outrageous with the themes and lyrics in Book of Mormon? Is there a line you have to draw before something gets too crude?
I deferred to them because they are the undisputed masters of that. But honestly, that’s not the way they look at it. There is nothing off limits for them, but if something isn’t funny, they’ll cut it. And very often it’s not funny because it seems cruel or it seems gratuitous or it just doesn’t make people laugh. But there were also a lot of moments where we thought, we have to hold back here and realized, “Oh no, the only way to top the previous joke is to take it further.” We did have to fully go there and let the audience go with us, you know?
It goes back to that joy we were talking about, it’s almost an escape when you can just totally let loose and laugh in the performance space.
Yeah, I mean, I’ve dealt with anxiety my whole life, and so music was really an escape and a way to express my own feelings and show people who I am. I’m a shy person by nature, but music became my way of interacting with the world, it allows me to be an extrovert, it brings people into my life in all sorts of ways. Music has really saved me, that’s for sure.