okay, so, I did a little lazy wikipedia-ing on this, and. holy shit.
“Menken originally composed a “soaring” ballad entitled “I Can’t Believe My Heart” for Meg to sing in the film,[2] which he had intended to serve as a solo that conveys the heroine falling in love with Hercules.[3][4] However, Meg’s supervising animator Ken Duncan disagreed with Menken’s song because he believed the character was “too tough” and “hardened by life” to perform such a soft ballad.[2] The writers agreed that Meg “wasn’t a ballad kind of girl.”[5] Therefore, Menken was prompted to write “I Won’t Say (I’m in Love)”, the style of which he based on some of the girl group songs he had written for his stage musical Little Shop of Horrors “
Which was, of course, inspired by THIS
So basically, the song is the fucking Supremes by way of Broadway SET IN ANCIENT GREECE WITH STRAIGHT UP MAGICAL BACKUP SINGERS FFS
Oh, and, speaking of which: the Muses were played by, like, Legit Broadway Professionals, and Susan Egan who played Meg was apparently super humbled working with them and was basically just going as hard as she could in order to keep up, lmao.
“Familiar with singers Cheryl Freeman, Lillias White, Vaneese Y. Thomas, LaChanze and Roz Ryan’s Broadway work, Egan felt intimated by their powerful voices and riffing abilities.[7] Egan recalled, “Alan would say, ‘Okay Lillias (White), just do a riff over there and LaChanze, you do a little something over here and Susan, just at the end, get from this note to this note and just do a riff.’ I raise my hand and I’m like, ‘Umm, can you plunk it out on the piano?’ He looks at me like, ‘Are you kidding?’”[7] While it took Egan half an hour to solidify only one of her riffs, the other singers recorded multiple takes of theirs within that same time; Egan was greatly humbled by the experience.”
So, uh, yeah. That’s a basic rundown of some of the reasosn why “won’t say I’m in love” goes so fucking hard, lol.
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