Ranking All the “Descendants” Movie Soundtrack Songs

Updated 7/22/2024

Descendants: The Rise of Red premiered in July 2024, so it is time to update our Descendants Songs Power Rankings!

Music rankings are tricky because each song hits a person differently, and no two people’s music rank lists will look exactly alike. However, we approached this objectively, especially with the target audience of 6 to 12-year-old kids.

A couple of notes about our rankings:

1) We’re not including songs from animated content

2) We’re only including songs that made the cut of the movie shown on Disney Channel/Disney+.

Without further ado,

THE SKIP ITs

These are songs that you listen to a couple of times, and afterward, you skip every time it comes up when you play the album (In Descendants’ case, if your kid allows you to)

27. “So This Is Love” (Brandy, Paolo Montalban, Descendants: The Rise of Red)

26. “Space Between” (Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Descendants 2)

25. “If Only” (Dove Cameron, Descendants)

24. “Kiss the Girl” (Dove Cameron, Descendants 2 End Credits)

23. “My Once Upon a Time” (Dove Cameron, Descendants 3)

Ballads are highly represented in the “SKIP IT”s; they never really fit with the trilogy's tone and tenor, nor did they fit with the songwriting team’s skill sets.

In the case of “So This Is Love,” this is a fine (but very short) song in a vacuum, but this romantic ballad sticks out like a badly colored sore thumb amongst the rest of the soundtrack. My 10-year-old daughter heard it once during the movie, and she stuck her finger down her throat. We skip it now every time we listen to the soundtrack.

THE SPACED OUTs

These songs are played, but you are spacing out, thinking of other things without regretting it.

22. “You and Me” (Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, Descendants 2)

21. “Queen of Mean” (Sarah Jeffery, Descendants 3)

20. “Be Our Guest” (Mitchell Hope, Spencer Lee, Kala Balch, Marco Marinangeli  etc: Descendants)

19. “Get Your Hands Dirty” (Malia Baker, Morgan Dudley, Descendants: The Rise of Red)

We really appreciate that Descendants, despite being a child of Disney IP, really strove for original music for most of its catalog. That is why, to this critic, their remaking of “Be Our Guest” in the first Descendants movie was disappointing, as it was a bland remake despite the mild hip/hop remix.

As far as the new entry to this list, my daughter and I didn’t understand the point of having “Get Your Hands Dirty” included in the scene other than meeting the song quota. It’s a vanilla song and doesn’t add anything to the soundtrack or the movie.

Editor’s Note: We received ALOT of feedback on ranking “Queen of Mean” this low. We address that feedback here. We stand by our ranking.

THE “KEEP IT ON”s

These are songs good enough to play it to the end every time it plays in the album queue

18. “Did I Mention” (Mitchell Hope, Spencer Lee, Descendants)

17. “Red”: (Kylie Catrall, Alex Boniello, Descendants: The Rise of Red)

16. “Life Is Sweeter” (Cast, Descendants: The Rise of Red)

15. “One Kiss” (Sofia Carson, Descendants 3)

14. “Ways to be Wicked” (Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, Descendants 2))

13. “Evil Like Me” (Kristin Chenoweth, Dove Cameron, Descendants)

12. “Break This Down” (Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, Cast, Descendants 3)

11. “Perfect Revenge” (Dara Renee, Anthony Pyatt, Joshua Colley, Descendants: The Rise of Red)

We put many songs from “The Rise of Red” in this group, with “Perfect Revenge” being the best of this group, even though I would have liked some of the other characters to sing more. (I know, according to the prequels, Maleficent isn’t big-time evil until later in life, but I don’t know why you bring her and Hades into this movie without giving them anything to do.)

Speaking of Maleficent, we put “Evil Like Me” as high as 13 out of respect for Kristin Chenoweth, but honestly, this song is very forgettable. It is the most classical Broadway song from the entire catalog; you could throw it in any musical with an evil character, and it would not feel out of place tonally. But it feels out of place in Descendants and very blah lyrically.

Side Note: The character Maleficent was always portrayed as tall, which makes Chenoweth’s casting even more amusing, considering she is 4’10, and she is barely taller than her teenage daughter Mal. If you can get her for a “made for TV” musical role, you have to do it, but maybe they could have given her some lifts like they did for Robert DeNiro in “The Irishman”??

THE ALL-STARS

These songs make any playlist with other hit songs from movie musicals.

10. “Fight of Our Lives” (Kylie Cantrall, Malia Baker, Descendants: The Rise of Red)

9. “Set It Off” (Cast, Descendants)

8. “Chillin Like a Villain” (Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, BooBoo Stewart, Mitchell Hope, Descendants 2)

7. “Good to be Bad” (Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, Descendants 3)

We’re big fans of crowd-sung choruses like “Set It Off”, and we’re super big fans of dramatic action set pieces like “Night Falls” (which you will see in the next section). Both may be too corny for some, and in any other musical, you would be correct, but it fits in Descendants, and that matters. I also think we’re going to have “Chillin’ Like a Villain” higher than most people, but we will rank it lower as soon as we get this damn chorus hook out of our heads in the year 2029.

As far as the new entry in this list, “Fight Of Our Lives” is a knockoff of “It’s Goin Down” from Descendants 2. However, it’s still very effective because Kylie Cantrall is excellent at singing with a rap style (like in the soundtrack version of “What’s My Name”, which didn’t make the movie for some weird reason because it’s the best part of the new version).

THE “PLAY IT ON LOOP”s

This is for songs you can’t get enough of once you hear it

6. “What’s My Name” (China Anne McClain, Thomas Doherty, Dylan Playfair, Descendants 2)

5. “Love Ain’t It” (Rita Ora, Kylie Cantrall, Brandy, Malia Baker, “Descendants: The Rise of Red”)

4. “It’s Goin’ Down” (Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, China Anne McClain, Descendants 2)

3. “Night Falls” (Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, China Anne McClain, Descendants 3)

2.“Do What You Gotta Do” (Dove Cameron, Cheyenne Jackson, Descendants 3)

1. “Rotten to The Core” (Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, Descendants)

The new entry to this list is here because, while it has some similarities to “Queen of Mean”, it is more complex and a mash-up of different styles that Descendants hadn’t tried before. Oh, and Rita Ora kills it as Queen of Hearts, both singing (especially in this song) and acting, and is the biggest surprise of the movie (hats off to the casting director; she wouldn’t have made my top 100 choices for the role heading into this movie). By the way, my daughter is obsessed with this song and insisted I put this #2 on these rankings (she doesn’t understand recency bias yet).

In truth, we wanted to make “It’s Going Down” #1 because of the unintentional comedy of these kids having a Braveheart-style confrontation on the pirate ship combined with Harry Hook twirling his mustache hook in song form.

But when we revisited these rankings, we agreed that ‘Rotten to the Core’ has to be #1. It put Descendants on the map, has several remixes, and is truly the catchiest song of them all.

We love the discussion these rankings bring because it is mostly adults arguing over songs. That’s really the best thing we can say about how good Descendants' music is; adults argue as passionately (probably more so, to be honest) than the target audience.