Celine Dion Is Returning To 'Beauty & The Beast'

She's returning for your favorite Disney film, but not for the song as old as time. On Thursday, Entertainment Weekly announced that Céline Dion will perform a song for the live-action Beauty and the Beast, and it's something that's got to sucker punch you in the childhood a little. And that's not all — the brand-new track will be written by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Tim Rice, the original masterminds behind the animated film's iconic score. You heard it here first: Everything old is news again.

The ballad, titled "How Does A Moment Last Forever," is about "holding onto life’s precious moments," according to EW, and it will be played over the film's ending credits. Amazing. Of course, this may be a consolation prize for not updating the film's famous ballroom scene song all over again. Lest you forget, Dion did a duet of the movie's theme with Peabo Bryson, which later went on to win a Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. This time around, the song is getting a major Top 40 facelift by pairing Ariana Grande with John Legend. But considering that Menken and Rice have stuck around for this film, and Dion is returning in her own right, it still feels as though this version isn't tampering with the legacy of the 1991 masterpiece.

Perhaps it's because the live-action Beauty And the Beast is being done more true-to-the-original than Disney's live-action Cinderella (or hey, any of the 20 Snow White flicks that came out in the past decade). It's really just the movie version of the musical, and the musical was just a live-action version of the movie. And in case that just made your brain hurt (it made my brain hurt), it is all very meta. It all self-referential and staying within the same bloodline.

So, will this new offering from Dion be as iconic as her cover for the original film? Let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet. However, it's important that the film is trusting all of those involved who made it musically significant beyond your garden variety Disney flick. It keeps a certain amount of integrity in tact (although, eh, maybe I'm still not 100 percent sold on the Grande and Legend collab, although it's nice that they're still covering that theme).

In any case, I'll be keeping m ears peeled for "How Does A Moment Last Forever," and counting down the days until Beauty and the Beast hits theaters March 17.