The Little Mermaid fans are seriously divided over the remake's new songs

The Little Mermaid
(Image credit: Disney)

Wake up, wake up, wake up! Have you not heard The Scuttlebutt? Or Prince Eric’s Wild Uncharted Waters power ballad? Or even Ariel’s interior For the First Time number?

Yep, the trio of new songs in The Little Mermaid live-action remake have set tongues wagging – including bad shower singing, we imagine – on social media. The problem is: no one can decide on whether the tracks are a treasure trove of musical gems or deserve to be consigned to the bottom of the ocean.

Understandably, given the hyperactive earworm of it all, Awkwafina and Daveed Diggs’ ‘Scuttlebutt’ has drawn plenty of attention.

"Scuttlebutt is catchy… y’all just hate fun," one wrote on Twitter. Another added, "Awkwafina did her thing. Scuttlebutt was a bop."

"Y’all will not convince me the Scuttlebutt is a good song," another account argued

One viewer commented, "I don’t think Scuttlebutt is a bad as everyone saying. Is it good? No, but it’s not awful."

Another wrote: "It’s fun, very unnecessary, I get that, but it’s also so short that like what, you can’t take a 2 min silly sequence for kids to laugh at in a 2+ hr movie? Come on, relax a little."

A separate account discussed the wider new works as a whole, saying, "It’s glaringly obvious they were composed & written by different people and so they feel comedically out of place."

Wild Uncharted Waters, meanwhile, is getting praise for being catchy – even if it’s being compared to Troy Bolton’s golf course dramatics in High School Musical. 

"I physically cannot stop thinking of wild uncharted waters. It’s an amazing song and Jonah [Hauer-King] did a fantastic job delivering the emotion," one Twitter account wrote.

For the First Time has united fans, however, with one describing Ariel’s singsong struggles to acclimatize to life on land "truly magical" and another calling it "literally perfect."

The Little Mermaid is now in theaters. For more, check out our favorite Disney songs, as well as all differences between The Little Mermaid remake and the original 1989 animation.

Bradley Russell

I'm the Senior Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, focusing on news, features, and interviews with some of the biggest names in film and TV. On-site, you'll find me marveling at Marvel and providing analysis and room temperature takes on the newest films, Star Wars and, of course, anime. Outside of GR, I love getting lost in a good 100-hour JRPG, Warzone, and kicking back on the (virtual) field with Football Manager. My work has also been featured in OPM, FourFourTwo, and Game Revolution.