The Princess Blog

A little over a month ago, I shared my desire to create an original album of princess songs inspired by the original fairy tales, giving the songs darker and more melancholic vibes than the Disney versions. I'm pleased to announce that I finished recording the final track yesterday, and the Locked Tower album is available on SoundCloud  with full  lyric videos on YouTube . I also submitted it for streaming on Spotify and other music sites. This was a really exciting project for me as a beginning piano player . I had no idea I'd be able to begin composing original songs within less than a year of learning to read music. I've been working with a talented instructor who's been a huge help in the process. Locked Tower contains ten songs, each based on a different fairy tale featuring a princess character. Since I'm still learning about chord progressions, most of the melodies are fairly simple, drawing inspiration from other famous princess melodies. This is the most o...

It's been seven months since I started studying music theory and learning to play piano . I've learned a lot in that time, even though I still have a long way to go. One of my longer-term goals, aside from my Princess Piano series , is to create an album of original princess songs that cover the topics Disney tends to shy away from in their adaptations. The working title for this album is Locked Tower. I recently recorded my first song, "Silent Siren," inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid."  I went through a few setbacks along the way when trying to determine how to get the best quality sound. After testing out two microphones and recording three different tracks and mixing them together on my computer, I was pretty happy with the result, even though I know it's not perfect. The Little Mermaid is the story that was changed the most drastically by Disney due to its tragic ending and darker themes. I wanted to write a song that p...

There are times when we can all use a little magic in our lives. For me, that was midway through 2025, when I booked a Very Merrytime cruise on the Disney Magic , which set sail earlier this week. This was my second Disney cruise after having the most amazing time on the Wish  a couple of years ago. Unlike the Wish, which was the newest ship at the time (though it isn't anymore), the Magic is the first and oldest ship in Disney's fleet. Still, there were many similarities between the two, which made me feel like an experienced Disney cruiser. Since it was my second time sailing with Disney, I was automatically inducted into their Castaway Club, which provided advance booking perks and a free tote bag and set of room key lanyards. When I first booked this cruise, I didn't know much about what to expect except aside from the magical experience I had on the Wish, and that was enough for me. Imagine my joy upon learning that, like the Wish, this ship features two princess stage...

In the eight years that I've had this blog , I've written about all sorts of magical fairy tale princesses from various types of media , but I rarely focus on real people . That's because the combination of kindness , beauty , and popularity , while still remaining genuine enough to avoid spreading  toxic positivity , is nearly impossible to embody in a real-life role model. That is, however, unless your name is Taylor Alison Swift , a woman who makes her money being pretty and witty. I have been a Swifty since the first time I heard "Teardrops on My Guitar" on the radio around 2008, and I am so proud of everything she has accomplished, particularly with her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl , which I think is one of her best yet. I cannot begin to tell you the number of ways this woman has inspired me in my creative endeavors, relationships, and difficult periods of my life, but that doesn't make me special. She's done the same for millions of people ...

The princess lifestyle is a relaxing one that involves taking the time to admire the beauty in the world around us. Although the most obvious type of beauty is visual, which is typically  through clothing , princesses also create auditory beauty through their songs . While I've always loved singing, I've never done it professionally or at an advanced level. Non-operatic singing is generally pretty easy. It doesn't require an understanding of music theory or the ability to perform multiple notes simultaneously (which I'm pretty sure is physically impossible). Since I have recently acquired a great deal of free time, I decided to take my musical know-how to the next level by learning to play piano. My goal in learning piano is not necessarily to become an entertainer but to have a deeper and more intimate understanding of the songs I've known and loved for most of my life by being able to read and interact with the notes that comprise them. That's why I started my...

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Rose of Versailles anime , MAPPA  launched a brand new movie that was licensed by Netflix  to retell the story using updated music and animation. The Rose of Versailles  sort of works as a film, but it struggles with many of the same issues as the Sailor Moon Cosmos  movies in that it tries to retell a long story for people with short attention spans and ends up skipping over many important details. The movie is presented as a disjointed musical. The first hour contains a stylized music video practically every five minutes to notate the passage of time and the emotional state of the characters. There was only one point where it looked like a character was singing the song, and it came so long after the more artsy videos that it was pretty jarring. The new adaptation of the 1972 anime retells the story about a woman named Oscar who is trained to be a French soldier to defend Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. It co...

It's been ten years since LoliRock  first took the stage on Netflix, and rumors of a potential third season  inspired me to watch the show again as I did with Winx Club , which recently previewed its upcoming reboot in Italy . LoliRock is a French  Magical Girl show about a lost princess  who must master her new powers while trying to liberate a mysterious faraway kingdom. It hits all the right plot notes to fit the Magical Girl algorithm, but poor writing prevents it from being a memorable entry in the genre. One thing that makes LoliRock unique is its focus on music. The three main characters aren't only magical princesses from other worlds but members of a hit rock band that performs full-length music videos at the end of each episode. Unfortunately, the overly synthesized sound of these songs is not very appealing to me, and I ended up skipping over them during my rewatch. The main character in LoliRock is Iris, a beautiful girl who loves to sing that was r...

Yesterday was the last day of World Princess Week . The week itself was mostly uneventful. Instead of celebrating squarely within the rigid August 25th-31st timeline, Disney had pop-up events throughout the month in anticipation of it. However, they topped the week off with a grand finale in mind by drawing attention to a short YouTube series that may have otherwise fallen under the radar. The series, aptly titled after the new Disney Princess brand campaign, is called "Create Your World: Making a Disney Song." As you may have guessed, the title of the new song is "Create Your World." The web series released a 10-minute webisode once a week for six weeks leading up to the final performance in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland on the last day of World Princess Week. I was not particularly invested in this web series when it started, so I "binged" all six webisodes on the final day. They portray an enthusiastic performer named Riley group...

We are two days into World Princess Week , the annual celebration of the Disney Princess brand , which takes place from August 25th to 31st this year. The beloved brand has moved on from its Ultimate Princess Celebration campaign  to begin a new marketing campaign called "Create Your World." The campaign kicked off at the beginning of the month with a commercial entitled  "The Magic Within"  in which little girls imagine Disney characters and symbols popping into their ordinary lives so they can live the modern princess life . This particular brand campaign seems more consumer-based than "Live Your Story,"  which encourages incorporating princess traits like kindness and bravery in everyday life. "Create Your World" sounds like an invitation to buy lots of Disney merchandise and turn your home into a castle , which is on brand with modern  Disney's questionable decisions that favor corporate greed over good storytelling. Although World Princ...

It seems like every interest has an official holiday each year, but for the longest time, there wasn't any day to celebrate our love of princesses. In 2017, the newly retired Swan Princess series  declared the film's anniversary date of November 18th to be National Princess Day . Since the date was coined by one of the few princess franchises that was not bought out by Disney , the Mouse House does very little to celebrate and instead started its own World Princess Week  at the end of each August beginning in 2021. However, the rest of us can still get together to celebrate our love of princesses for National Princess Day on November 18th. This is a significant time period for not just The Swan Princess , but many other animated princess movies which  historically always come out right before Thanksgiving to generate optimal sales. The next Disney Princess movie to follow this tradition will be Wish , which comes to theaters on Wednesday. In honor of all these princess ...

Time Princess  released its latest visual novel so quickly after  the last one  that I barely had time to breathe. Compared to the other visual novels in this game, Spring Sonata is most similar to  Whispers of the Rain  since it takes place in a more realistic contemporary setting and Si-woo's Sight  because the protagonist is an aspiring musician in Korea. It certainly isn't the next historical fantasy novel I was hoping for, but it was quick and entertaining enough for a short weekend. The story is very straightforward and only has one true ending, so there is little reason to replay most of the levels. Spring Sonata is about a young cellist named Jeong Si-eun who attends a prestigious music school in Korea. I found this character difficult to relate to at first because she is quite pretentious about her musical knowledge and skills. Because of this, she has trouble making friends at her new school and doesn't understand how to play with emotion. Over th...