Disney's Frozen 2 had to pack a lot into its runtime, which meant a number of songs ended up being deleted from the final version of the movie. Released in November 2019, Frozen 2 became the highest grossing animated movie of all time, despite garnering mixed reviews. As with the first movie, 2013's Frozen, a major reason for the film's popularity was its soundtrack, which included new hits such as "Into The Unknown" and "Show Yourself".
Unlike the first movie, there was no all-conquering phenom like "Let It Go", but topping its success was always going to be a near-impossible endeavor. Nonetheless, Frozen 2 still delivered plenty of earworms for fans young and old, even giving Jonathan Groff's Kristoff a much-desired song in the form of a 1980s power ballad. However, things could've been different for the music in the sequel. As revealed in the Disney+ documentary, Into The Unknown: Making Frozen II, the film underwent a raft of changes during its production, and songs were no different.
One of the near-victims was "Show Yourself", a song the filmmakers struggled to get right and fit into what was a confusing narrative for test audiences. Ultimately they made it work and "Show Yourself" wasn't cut, but there were plenty of songs from Frozen 2 that weren't so lucky.
"Get This Right"
As mentioned, Frozen 2 gives Kristoff a song - but it wasn't the first musical number they planned for him. After complaints that Groff didn't get to show off his vocal talents in the first movie, directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee really wanted to make sure he didn't miss out second time around. The original idea was "Get This Right", which would've been a duet between Kristoff and Anna (Kristen Bell), charting his struggle to propose to her; or in other words, to get it right. It's a catchy, upbeat number that does feel a little more like what audiences would conventionally expect from a Frozen movie, feeling a bit more in line with something like "Love Is An Open Door".
Including "Get This Right" (also known as "I Wanna Get This Right") would changed Frozen 2 significantly: not only was the story of the song more stretched out into Kristoff's arc in the film as a whole, rather than being contained to one number, but the ending would be different too. In the deleted song, Anna ends up proposing to Kristoff, whereas at the end of Frozen 2 she accepts his marriage proposal. Ultimately it was cut to better serve the story, but songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez still delivered on a song for Groff, who in Into The Unknown says: "When the song fell to the floor I was like 'oh, that's such a bummer', because it's such a fun song, and they were like 'but don't worry, we're going to write you an emotional rock-ballad'."
"Home"
"Home" would've been a song from Anna about Arendelle, set to appear at the beginning of Frozen II. As the title suggests, the song is essentially a love letter from Anna to the place she lives and grew up in, as she sings of feeling like she's "...Not yet done enough / For these people I know, this place that I love so." The animation, which was storyboarded, saw Anna taking in many of the sights, sounds, and people of Arendelle, increasing her desire to give more back to them. The idea was to establish Anna as having the most to lose in the sequel, since she has Elsa back and the rest of her new family, but to also help setup the ending of Frozen 2, where Anna is crowned Queen of Arendelle. Mostly backed by just an acoustic guitar (though other instruments are introduced later), it's a lovely song that the filmmakers were particularly sad to see go [via CinemaBlend], but it was cut so that the opening could feature the other characters. "Home" doesn't include Elsa, Olaf, Kristoff, or Sven, and as Bell explained to Collider, "...When we watched it, it didn’t feel right that you didn’t see the rest of the characters." Instead, the song was replaced by the new opening, Some Things Never Change."
"I Seek The Truth"
Despite not being recorded by either Bell or Idina Menzel, "I Seek The Truth" is a deleted duet between Elsa and Anna, with the vocals for the outtake song performed by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Patti Murin, who played Anna in Broadway's Frozen. It's one that speaks to the dynamic and history between the pair, as Elsa desperately speaks to her mother in the search for answers, while Anna refuses to allow her sister to shut her out again. It's a powerful duet, and one easy to imagine really showing off Menzel's considerable vocal range especially and allowing her to hit some big notes, with a strong piano arrangement accompanying it. The song was replaced in Frozen 2 by "Into The Unknown", which happened as the story developed to include the voice calling to Elsa, and to give her a big musical moment that could compete with "Let It Go", and parts of "I Seek The Truth" were worked into "All is Found".
"See The Sky"
Sterling K. Brown's Mattias is one of the most important new characters in Frozen 2, as a member of the Arendelle army who has been suspended in time in the Enchanted Forest. However, he was almost given an even bigger part to play, as the forces of Arendelle and Northuldra would've been given a musical moment not long after being discovered by Anna and Elsa, which would've meant Brown getting a chance to sing. The song, "See The Sky", hasn't been fully released, but snippets of it are teased in Disney+'s Into The Unknown. The song would've seen the soldiers singing to Elsa for salvation from the Enchanted Forest, but was again changed as the filmmakers decided the story worked better without it. Of the song being cut, Brown told Digital Spy: "You mourn. You're like, 'Oh, that was always fun.' And then they come up with something else that's really, really, fun."
"Unmeltable Me"
While audiences responded extremely well to Olaf in Frozen 2 (much like in the first movie), and elements of his story were added in because of that - such as his recap of the first movie - not everything involving the snowman survived into the finished product. Although he still gets his own song, Olaf did have another musical number in Frozen II, titled "Unmeltable Me". Frozen 2 gave Olaf permafrost to stop him from melting, writing away the need for him to have a new body created and solving an issue from the first film. This song was supposed to be both a celebration and explanation of that, with Olaf elaborating that "I once needed my own flurry / But now you need not worry." It's another fun, silly, and very Olaf song, but it doesn't offer much to the narrative for the sake of how much space it would otherwise take up. With plenty of Olaf in Frozen 2 already, "Unmeltable Me" didn't make the cut.