Composer & Lyricist
Robert Lopez is an American composer and lyricist best known for co-creating the Broadway musicals Avenue Q, The Book of Mormon, and the Disney animated film Frozen. He is one of only two people to have won all four major entertainment awards—an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony—known as the EGOT, and he achieved this feat in record time.
Robert Lopez was born on February 23, 1975, in New York City and grew up in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. He attended Hunter College High School, where he met his future collaborator Jeff Marx. Lopez studied English at Yale University, graduating in 1997, and while there he wrote musicals with classmates, including a piece called Kermit, Prince of Denmark that parodied both Shakespeare and the Muppets.1
After college, Lopez and Marx began developing a musical based on the concept of a neighborhood where puppets and humans coexist, inspired by their own experiences as struggling artists. This eventually became Avenue Q, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2003 and transferred to Broadway later that year. The show won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2004, beating the heavily favored Wicked.2
Lopez's next major project was The Book of Mormon, created with Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame, and composer/lyricist Kristen Anderson-Lopez (his wife). The musical premiered on Broadway in 2011 and became a critical and commercial phenomenon, winning nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score.
Lopez also contributed songs to the Broadway adaptation of Frozen (2018), which earned him a Tony nomination for Best Original Score. He has worked on other projects such as Finding Nemo – The Musical at Disney's Animal Kingdom and the television series Wonder Pets!, for which he wrote songs.
In 2013, Lopez and his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez wrote the songs for Disney's animated film Frozen, including the global hit "Let It Go." The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media.3 The film itself became the highest-grossing animated film at the time, and its soundtrack topped charts worldwide.
Lopez returned for the sequel Frozen II (2019), writing the song "Into the Unknown," which earned another Oscar nomination. He also wrote songs for the Disney film Coco (2017) with Anderson-Lopez, including "Remember Me," which won the Oscar for Best Original Song.4
Lopez achieved EGOT status in 2014 when he won an Emmy for the song "Bigger!" from the PBS series Wonder Pets!. He had previously won two Tonys, two Oscars, and a Grammy. He is the youngest person to complete the EGOT, at age 39, and the fastest, completing it in just over a decade.
In addition to the EGOT, Lopez has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (2018) and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2023. He has also been nominated for multiple Olivier Awards for his work in London's West End.5
Beyond his major hits, Lopez has written songs for a variety of niche projects. He contributed to the 2005 children's album Curious George soundtrack and wrote the song "The Book of Love" for the film WALL-E (2008), though it was not included in the final cut. He also wrote a song for the 2012 film The Odd Life of Timothy Green.
Lopez is known for his rapid-fire lyricism and often embeds hidden jokes in his songs. For example, in Avenue Q, the song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" sparked controversy but was defended as a satirical take on prejudice. He also wrote the theme song for the animated series Little Einsteins and has a cameo in the film Frozen as the voice of a troll.1
Robert Lopez's achievements have made him a defining figure in contemporary musical theater and film music.
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