"Happy Working Song" takes place in Robert's untidy apartment in Manhattan, New York, in which Giselle spends her first night in the city after having been magically transported there from the fictional Andalasia. The next morning, Giselle awakens to find the apartment in a state of neglect and decides to clean it, summoning several animals to her aid. Additionally, the musical number references similar scenes from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella (1950). Based on 1950s music, "Happy Working Song"'s bridge deliberately references the song "Belle" from Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991).
Musically, "Happy Working Song" shares similarities with the songs "Heigh-Ho" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, "The Work Song" from Cinderella and "Something There" from Beauty and the Beast. The song has garnered vastly positive reviews, with both film and music critics praising its humorous, witty lyrics, allusions and references to previous Disney films and songs, as well as Adams' performance. "Happy Working Song" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 80th Academy Awards in 2008 alongside Enchanted's own "That's How You Know" and "So Close", making the film one of only four to achieve this feat. Ultimately, the song lost to "Falling Slowly" from Once (2007), while the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences subsequently decided to limit the total number of Best Original Song nominations to only two per film.
Veteran Disney composer, Alan Menken, became actively creatively involved with Enchanted in 2006, subsequently inviting his longtime collaborator, lyricist Stephen Schwartz, with whom Menken had previously worked on Disney's Pocahontas (1995) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), to co-write the songs and musical numbers for Enchanted alongside him.[1] Menken said of the general songwriting process, "the first challenge for us was finding that musical palette and lyrical palette and performance palette that really spoke to everybody and said that we are in the world of early Walt and to have that place to start."[1]
When it came to writing "Happy Working Song", Menken and Schwartz were directly influenced by the song "Whistle While You Work" from Disney's first full-length animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), with Schwartz describing "Happy Working Song" as a "spoof"[2] and "one of the funniest sequences of the film".[2] According to Schwartz, "Happy Working Song" was written rather quickly, having come "[to the songwriters] really fast".[3] Schwartz elaborated, "'Happy Working Song' is ... pretty much out of Snow White and 'Whistle While You Work' and that little thing where they do the dishes and Dopey with the soap bubbles and everything."[3] In addition to this, "Happy Working Song" features references to both the musical number "The Work Song" and "the busy little mice" from Disney's Cinderella (1950),[2] but to a significantly lesser extent.[3] Lyrically, Schwartz decided to approach the song comically as demonstrated by its phrase "Even though you are vermin."[3]
Conceptually, Menken explained that "As the characters become sort of three dimensional, songs become more contemporary."[4] Ultimately, Menken believes that, melodically, "Happy Working Song" is very much similar to the songs "Belle" and "Something There" from Beauty and the Beast. Additionally, orchestrator and arranger Danny Troob revealed the bridge of "Happy Working Song" is directly based on the bridge of "Belle", particularly serving as "a deliberate reference on [the songwriters'] part."[4] Addressing the musical similarities between "Happy Working Song" and "Something There", Troob explained that the former occupies a different "drive"[4] and "attitude",[4] additionally sounding "a little bit more brisk ... because [Giselle is] working."[4] Troob elaborated, "Beauty and the Beast was, for its time, very forward-looking, and 'Happy Working Song' is deliberately retro."[4] Troob decided to alter and deliberately steer the song away from Menken and Schwartz's original 1970s-inspired musical arrangement in an attempt to "make it feel like the 1950s"[4] by "manipulating instruments [sic] textures."[4]
American actress, Amy Adams, who portrays Giselle, had previously "worked in musical theater before [she] moved to Los Angeles"[5] in order to pursue a career as a film actress, and was therefore "very comfortable with the idea of singing".[5] Citing both actress and singer Julie Andrews[5] and several Disney Princesses as musical inspiration, Adams decided to perform the film's first song, "True Love's Kiss", in the style of an operetta[6] before eventually replacing this with a more Broadway musical-style voice for "Happy Working Song".[7]
"Happy Working Song" is a "vibrant",[26] uptempo pop song. Reminiscent of and influenced by a variety of "archetypal Disney"[27] and "classical-sounding" musical numbers,[26] the musical theater-inspired song runs a total length of two minutes and nine seconds.[28][29] Incorporating into its lyrical structure a variety of "clever" words including "toilet", "hairball" and "vermin",[30] while rhyming humorous terms such as "hum" and "scum"[31] with "dum dum dum" and "vacu-um",[32] "Happy Working Song"'s use of "comical",[33] "tongue-in-cheek lyrics",[26] according to Filmtracks.com, both describe and add narration to Giselle's "attempts to conjure an ultra happy tune while scrubbing floors and toilets in the real world"[33] upon deciding "to clean her new home with the help of ... cockroaches and flies".[34] Its musical instrumentation is heavily reliant on the use of the harpsichord, with Filmtracks.com additionally describing "Happy Working Song" as a "harpsichord-laced" song.[33] Troob purposefully included the harpsichord in the song's instrumentation and orchestration in order to provide it with a more accurate "period setting".[4]
Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly described "Happy Working Song" as a "hilarious ... production number" that successfully "encapsulates the joys of Enchanted".[41] The Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern enthusiastically praised both the song and the sequence, hailing the latter as "magical" while describing "Happy Working Song" as a "gleeful variation on theme of 'Whistle While You Work'".[42] Similarly, Todd McCarthy of Variety called "Happy Working Song" "a hilarious variation on 'Whistle While You Work'".[14] Sun Media's Kevin Williamson hailed the musical number as one of the film's "stand-outs", elaborating, "[']Happy Working Song[' is] a crowd-pleaser."[21] The Mountain Xpress' Ken Hanke allotted particular praise to Adams', writing that when the actress is "singing her 'Happy Working Song' with her makeshift 'forest friends' ... she is the perfect cartoon heroine made flesh".[23] Kerry Lengel of The Arizona Republic jokingly lauded "Happy Working Song" as "the funniest - and grossest - set piece in the film."[43] Calling the sequence the "film's highlight", Carrie Rickey of The Philadelphia Inquirer commented, "The song, like the movie, is cheerfully gross enough to get boys - and their fathers - into theater seats for a story every tween and her mother will love."
Film critics who generally disliked Enchanted tended to have mostly positive things to report about "Happy Working Song". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, who assigned the film a negative score of two out of five stars, in contrast gave "Happy Working Song" a positive review, describing it as "a funny opening song". Additionally, Bradshaw drew similarities between the musical number and scenes from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).[44]
One of the song's few negative reviews was written by Mary F. Pols of the Contra Costa Times, who opined, "a cleaning crew of vermin and cockroaches is just real enough to be crass rather than funny".[45]
Empire ranked "Happy Working Song" third on its list of the "10 Great Musical Numbers" of the decade, writing that although "Shrek set the benchmark for Disney song parodies at Everest levels ... it's Amy Adams calling on New York's creatures of the forest to tidy up Patrick Dempsey's apartment that pulls it off to perfection."[46]
"Happy Working Song" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 80th Academy Awards in 2008 alongside Enchanted songs "That's How You Know" and "So Close", ultimately dominating the category.[47][48] However, the song was generally not favored to win by the media in spite of the fact that it was vastly a critical success.[49][50][51] According to a poll conducted by Billboard in anticipation of the ceremony, when the magazine asked 155 of its readers "Who gets your vote for best original song in a motion picture at the Academy Awards?";[49] only 5% of them voted in favor of "Happy Working Song" winning the award while 10% voted for "So Close" and 24% voted for "That's How You Know". In addition to this, 6% of readers voted for August Rush's "Raise It Up" and 22% voted for Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's "Falling Slowly" from Once (2007).[49] Ultimately, "Happy Working Song" lost to "Falling Slowly".[52] Menken believes that his compositions did not win the Best Original Song award because three of them had been nominated at once.[53]
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