Background and composition The Daily Telegraph explained that instead of the villain originally envisioned by the producers, the songwriters saw Elsa as "a scared girl struggling to control and come to terms with her gift." When interviewed in January 2014 by
John August and
Aline Brosh McKenna,
Frozen director
Jennifer Lee gave her recollection of the song's conception: "Bobby and Kristen said they were walking in
Prospect Park, and they just started talking about what would it feel like [to be Elsa]. Forget villain. Just what it would feel like. And this concept of letting out who she is[,] that she's kept to herself for so long[,] and she's alone and free, but then the sadness of the fact [
sic] that the last moment is she's alone. It's not a perfect thing, but it's powerful." "Let It Go" was the first song written by
Kristen Anderson-Lopez and
Robert Lopez for the film that made it in, since songs composed earlier were eventually cut. The story outline they were given had a place reserved for "Elsa's Badass Song", which was what they were trying to write. The duo took inspiration from the songs of the
Disney Renaissance such as
The Little Mermaid and
Beauty and the Beast and various artists including
Adele,
Aimee Mann,
Avril Lavigne (whose 2002 debut album incidentally is titled
Let Go),
Lady Gaga, and
Carole King. The song finally began to gel one day as the couple walked together from their home in
Park Slope to nearby
Prospect Park while they were "thinking from an
emo kind of place." Anderson-Lopez explained what happened next: "We went for a walk in Prospect Park and threw phrases at each other. What does it feel like to be the perfect exalted person, but only because you've held back this secret? Bobby came up with 'kingdom of isolation,' and it worked." Lopez was able to improvise the song's first four lines on the spot. Back at their home studio, they composed the rest of the song by alternating between improvising melodies on a piano and brainstorming lyrics on a
whiteboard, and finished it within a single day. Anderson-Lopez and Lopez specifically wrote the song for
Idina Menzel, referring to her as "one of the most glorious voices of
Broadway and an icon in musical theater." Menzel's
vocal range was taken under consideration during the music's composition, as she was well able to span three octaves. The song was originally written a half-step lower, in the key of G. During recording, Menzel felt it sounded "womanly" and "sultry" and suggested raising the key to make it more "innocent" and "juvenile", which also made it more challenging to perform.
Recording For each song they created, including "Let It Go", Anderson-Lopez and Lopez recorded a
demo in their studio, then emailed it to the Disney Animation production team in Burbank for discussion at their next
videoconference. After the film's release, Anderson-Lopez was shown an "explicitly honest" fan version of the song with very colorful lyrics, and in response, she noted that in the videoconferences she herself had used similarly candid language to describe Elsa's mindset at that point in the plot: "After a while, Chris Montan, the head of music at Disney, would be like, 'Whoa, language!'" She also disclosed that Disney Animation's Chief Creative Officer
John Lasseter (who served as
executive producer for
Frozen) was so taken with "Let It Go" that he played her original demo of the song in his car for months. Once approved, the song's
piano-vocal score, along with the rest of their work for
Frozen, was eventually forwarded to arranger
David Metzger at his home studio in
Salem, Oregon, who
orchestrated their work into a lush sound suitable for recording by a full
orchestra at the Eastwood Scoring Stage on the
Warner Bros. studio lot in
Burbank at the end of July 2013. The song's vocal track was recorded separately prior to orchestration at
Sunset Sound in
Hollywood, with the piano track from the demo playing into Menzel's headphones. Although Elsa was originally written as a villain, co-directors
Chris Buck and Lee gradually rewrote Elsa into one of the film's protagonists after "Let It Go" was composed. When it came to animating Elsa's scenes for the song, Lopez and Anderson-Lopez insisted on the particular detail that Elsa should slam the palace doors on the audience at the song's end, which they acknowledged was similar to the ending of the Broadway musical
Sweeney Todd. Lopez explained that they wanted that feeling of how "this character doesn't need us anymore," because he had always loved that feeling "when a character just kind of malevolently looks at you and slams a door in your face," although in the final version, Elsa's facial expression ended up as more of a "sly smile". According to Lopez, it was the last line at the end, "the cold never bothered me anyway," that was "our little
Avril Lavigne line". On December 6, 2013,
Walt Disney Animation Studios released a video of the entire "Let It Go" sequence as seen in the movie. On January 30, 2014, a sing-along version of the sequence was released. ==International versions==