After a win at this weekend’s Daytime Emmys, Alan Menken, composer, songwriter, and longtime Disney collaborator, is officially the 16th person ever to achieve an EGOT, by winning an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony award. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater were awarded Best Original Song in a Children’s, Young Adult or Animated Program for “Waiting in the Wings,†a tune they penned for Disney Channel’s Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventures (initially titled Tangled: The Series), sung by frustrated handmaiden/would-be warrior Cassandra, voiced by Eden Espinosa, and, in a reprise, Hudson D’Andrea as a younger Cassandra.
As for the other letters in his EGOT, Menken has eight Academy Awards, the first being his Best Original Score win for 1989’s The Little Mermaid; 11 Grammys, starting with a Best Recording for Children award for, of course, The Little Mermaid; and one Tony for Best Original Score, earned in 2012 for the Broadway production of Newsies. Menken did receive an honorary Primetime Emmy in 1990, but this is his first actual, competitive Emmy win.
You can go ahead and hear Espinosa and D’Andrea sing “Waiting in the Wings†below, and you let us know if you don’t tear up just as much as you do when you hear Little Mermaid’s “Part of Your World.†Alan Menken didn’t EGOT because he’s bad at writing power ballads.