Speechless itself isn't a bad song, imo. It's just that it clashed with everything Alan Menken, Howard Ashman, and Tim Rice wrote originally.
The Pasek-Paul-Menken collab actually made me nervous about the latter's collab with Lin-Manuel for The Little Mermaid live-action remake. I get why Disney wants to bring a modern sensibility in terms of the book and the score (and Lin sure does personify that modernity with In the Heights
--my personal preference, by the way. Sorry Hamilfans--and Hamilton), but for me, the live-action Aladdin showed why due diligence is needed in terms of weaving in new threads of storyline into the existing one. A lot of you have echoed this sentiment: there should be new material to uncover in the story, yet there is still respect for the original existing material. Sure we got a
This Is Me-esque (which is probably the reason why P&P got hired in the first place) Jasmine solo, but did that song serve the material as well as the other Jasmine songs (
To Be Free,
These Palace Walls, or even
Call Me a Princess) did?
I'm still looking forward to the new live-action of LM, don't get me wrong. I just hope we don't get another Aladdin (2019) with this one. We are losing the gorgeous Broadway songs for it after all!
And I really hope Halle is being treated way better than John B. and Kelly Marie T. was in Star Wars.