It features original songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foaʻi, with orchestrations provided by David Metzger, and with lyrics in English, Samoan, Tokelauan and Tuvaluan.

The two-disc deluxe edition includes the score, which was composed by Mancina, as well as demos, outtakes and instrumental karaoke tracks.

[8] Since Hamilton had not yet premiered on Broadway at the time Disney Animation was hiring a songwriter, Miranda was still relatively unknown and had to audition for Moana.

[9] He was overjoyed to meet directors John Musker and Ron Clements, where he told them they were the reason he became a songwriter, because the song "Under the Sea" in The Little Mermaid (1989) "blew [his] tiny 9-year-old mind".

[21] The album sold 509,000 copies in the United States by April 2017, making it the third soundtrack to surpass a half-million in sales that year after Suicide Squad and Trolls.

1 on Billboard Soundtracks Chart,[24] with 61 weeks in total by October 23, 2021[25] Pable Ruiz of Rotascopers said "After the enormous success of Frozen, with its Broadway-type songs written by the married duo of Robert and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Disney decided to repeat the formula" [and use a Broadway star for the recording].

[5] During an episode of WWE Raw on March 15, 2024, Maui's voice actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson—having returned to his part-time professional wrestling career and revived his villainous "Hollywood Rock" persona for the first time since 2003—vowed to injure Cody Rhodes and threatened Rhodes' mother by singing a line from the chorus of "You're Welcome" into the camera in a sinister fashion.