‘Encanto’ Is Officially the Survival Soundtrack for Moms Right Now

I first watchedEncantowith my husband and mother over the Christmas break. My three-year-old was fast asleep in his bed, but the world was buzzing about it, and I needed to know what all the fuss about. Of course, in a post-Frozenworld, all Disney flicks now come with high expectations. AddLin-Manuel Mirandato the credits and the anticipation reaches a fever pitch.

Just five minutes in, as the opening number “The Family Madrigal” concluded, I knew: the feminist, community-minded plot ofEncantowas good. But it was the soundtrack that really left me energized. (I was still humming, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” as I went off to bed.)

On the other side of myEncanto查看,impact of Omicron was waiting for me. I stressed about school closures, on-again-off-again childcare, KN95 mask shortages and whether or not I was making decisions that could have a devastating effect on the health of my too-young-to-be-vaccinated son. The memes about moms being dead inside flickered across my social feeds the morning I brought him back to preschool. So before hopping online to work, I decided to casually cue up “表面压力”…you know, just to take the edge off.

The beat and rhythm caught me by surprise. And the lyricsgotme. “Watch as she falls and bends, but never breaks,” Luisa belts out in the power ballad about a woman with superhuman strength cracking under the pressure of meeting everyone else’s expectations. Sound familiar anyone?

I danced my face off around my apartment, eventually whirling around to see my husband looking perplexed. (Yep, we’re both still working from home.) The song was piping through my Airpods, so he had no idea what was up. “It’s just theEncantosoundtrack,” I replied.

But I wasn’t the only one feeling the power of Miranda’s musical stylings. Just this morning, my boss messaged me: “I cannot stop listening. I felt sort of pathetic that the day my daughter was allowed to go back to school after a 10-day quarantine, I spent hours listening to a children’s song.” And I noticed other moms I follow on Instagram posting videos of themselves alone in their car belting out tunes like “What Else Can I Do?” and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”

Even the group text chain lit up: “We need to talk about Bruno, you guys,” one friend said, in between texts about rising Omicron numbers and work/life anxiety. “I cannot stop listening toEncanto. My kids aren’t even around.”

My phone buzzed again when thenews brokethat “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” surpassedFrozen’s “Let It Go” on the Billboard charts, becoming the highest-charting Disney song since 1995’s “Colors of the Wind”.My friends nodded in collective agreement: Yep, makes sense.

So, whatisit about this soundtrack that has moms singing—and sometimes screaming—it from the rooftops?

My take: The music is top-notch, but so is the timing. The catchy Miranda-infused rhythm of every song feels like a temporary reprieve from the stress and anxiety of a world that is swallowing women whole, while at the same time acknowledging the burden of being “superhuman,” an expectation for mothers without any credible social safety net. Plus, if the pandemic has taught us nothing else, it’s to appreciate the joy found in the little things. And dammit, this is a little thing.

So, if you need to talk about Bruno—and crank the volume a little higher this week—godspeed.