I Know It's Today Lyrics – Shrek

Song Overview

“I Know It’s Today” introduces Princess Fiona in Shrek The Musical through three versions of herself—8-year-old (Leah Greenhaus), teenage (Marissa O’Donnell), and adult (Sutton Foster). Jeanine Tesori’s lilting pop–folk trio distills fifteen years of isolation into a single, witty show-stopper.

Personal Review

An arpeggiated guitar sets a lullaby feel in E-major. Young Fiona chirps nursery vowels; the teen adds pop scoops and eye-rolls; adult Fiona belts Broadway brass over modulating key lifts (E ? F ? G?). Harmonies stack like diary entries—hope curdling into sarcasm. One-sentence snapshot? A time-lapse of optimism aging in a turret.

Song Meaning and Dramaturgy

Fairy-tale deconstruction. Lindsay-Abaire’s lyric riffs on Rapunzel, Snow White, and Princess-in-a-Coma tropes, but Fiona edits the tales mid-song—foreshadowing her later rejection of storybook rules.

Three-age device. Tesori was inspired by Sondheim’s Little Night Music trio writing; each Fiona sings the same melodic shape a full tone higher, symbolizing maturing pitch and impatience.

Comic desperation. Lines like “How I wonder does she pee?” undercut princess decorum, grounding Fiona as relatable and slightly unhinged after 8 000 tower days.

“Cut the villains, cut the vamping … And the waiting! The waiting!”

The bridge is a literal editorial meltdown—Fiona tries to fast-forward the narrative itself.

Verse Highlights

Day 23 (Child)

Key: E; piccolos double vocal; innocence.

Day 958 (Teen)

Key: F; snare rim-shots accent eye-roll sarcasm.

Day 8 423 (Adult)

Key: G?; brass stabs and mixed-belt climax into three-part canon.

Detailed Annotations

The fourth number in Shrek: The Musical introduces Princess Fiona through the buoyant trio voice of Leah Greenhaus, Marissa O’Donnell, and Sutton Foster. “I Know It’s Today” whisks the audience from fairy-tale optimism to tower-top cabin fever, all inside a brisk five-plus minutes. Below, the annotation threads are reshaped into prose so the I Know It’s Today Lyrics gleam with subtext instead of stage directions.

Overview

Settle in girls, it's story time!.

Alone in her lofty prison, young Fiona rallies a silent tea party of dolls and plush toys. By naming her audience “girls,” she fabricates company, a coping mechanism that keeps loneliness from gnawing through stone walls. It is the first hint that imagination will be her oxygen.

Mirror Images

There's a princess / In a tower / Oh my gosh, that's just like me!.

Rapunzel’s saga lands like a mirror shard. Both heroines share a locked-away fate; therefore, the child’s giddy recognition rings true. Yet Fiona’s next quip—

Poor Rapunzel / Needs a haircut.

—shows her practical streak. A snip of humor trims despair, focusing not on captivity but on grooming logistics. Even at seven, Fiona rewrites tales to suit her mood, a habit she will double down on as the years stack.

Clock Watching

As years go by she sits and waits / As years go by? Uh oh.

The fairy tale suddenly stretches beyond bedtime-story length, and the child freezes. Three weeks and two days—

Day number... Twenty three.

—felt epic already. Realization dawns that rescue might stall, cracking the first line in her porcelain faith. This pivot aligns with annotation #4, capturing the instant dread eclipses pixie dust.

Page-Turning as Survival

Skip ahead! Skip ahead!.

Books are both window and blindfold. Whenever a plot echoes her own confinement, Fiona flips past the gloomy middles. Annotation #5 notes she “uses books to escape,” so she censors details that threaten that escape hatch. It is self-editorial therapy, centuries before self-help podcasts.

Snow-White Sarcasm

There's a princess / In a coma.

Enter Teenage Fiona, now 9 or 10. Annotation #12 calculates nine hundred fifty-eight days of waiting, so world-weariness seeps in. Her snarky question—

How I wonder does she pee?.

—breaks the Disney hush around bodily functions. Boredom births irreverence. She has read each classic so often that summary shorthand—

Blah blah blah, poison apple / Boring boring, evil queen.

—flashes across her lips like a Tumblr meme. She desires only the spark notes to happiness, not the padded chapters.

Fair-Tale Fine Print

Manly hose.

Hormones arrive with mockingbirds. Teenage Fiona’s aside could wink at princely leggings or a sly euphemism for male anatomy; the annotation spots the double entendre. Either way, she is now alert to more than weddings and waltzes.

And our pre-nup will be binding!.

Precocious finance talk spills from a ten-year-old who clearly rifled through grown-up volumes in the library. The humor pivots on how a locked-in princess still frets over divorce settlements—proof that endless reading broadens vocabulary even as walls stay firm.

Impatience Escalates

Take your pick, they're all like me! / Not exactly, I'm still waiting!.

Adult Fiona—annotation #13 stresses her isolation—realizes she alone has not reached an epilogue. The irony bites: generic storybook maidens already sip their happily-ever-after cocktails, while she tallies marks on cold stone.

Oops, did I do that?.

The rip of a page signals rebellion; soon she is shredding entire chapters—

Cut the puppet and the whale!.

—a shout-out to Pinocchio that makes her new motto clear: delete anything delaying Act III. By vandalizing the books (annotation #18), Fiona performs literary self-harm and empowerment at once.

The Waiting Crescendo

And the waiting! The waiting! The waiting! The waiting! / The waiting!.

The pent-up chant, noted in annotation #16, morphs into percussive theater—a heartbeat of frustration that sets the stage lights pulsing. Every repetition is a clang on the tower bars.

Though I seem a bit bipolar... .

Fiona self-diagnoses her whiplash moods many centuries before DSM-5. Sudden veers from rage to hope mark a long-term prisoner juggling mental survival tactics.

Prayer and Pop Culture

Are you there, god? / It's me, Fiona.

Tim Rice slips in Judy Blume’s title as annotation #21 observes, underscoring the coming-of-age beat. Fiona, once a simple believer in “rules and strictures,” now questions heaven with the shy candor of Blume’s heroine.

Talent Claims

And a very gifted bowler!.

She boasts athletic prowess impossible inside a turret. Either she crafted makeshift lanes from chamber pots and candlesticks (annotation #19’s theory) or she is inflating her résumé, polishing her self-worth against damp stone.

Time Served

Day number eight thousand, four hundred and... Twenty three.

Twenty-three years. Annotation #23 calculates Fiona at roughly thirty, turning the princess-in-waiting cliché on its ear. The line lands like a crash cymbal: faith that began as lullaby has survived almost a quarter century in solitary.

Thread of Hope

I know it's today!.

The chorus of three Fionas swells, tripling one belief across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The I Know It’s Today refrain may wobble between mania and mantra, but it never extinguishes. Each time the song title surfaces, the I Know It’s Today Lyrics reassert that hope itself is action, not passivity.

Musical Texture

Composer Jeanine Tesori layers rising key changes so every new Fiona steps up a tonal stair. Leah Greenhaus chirps in bright innocence, Marissa O’Donnell adds mid-range sass, and Sutton Foster tops the chord with full-belt frustration. The three-tier vocal design underlines annotation #2’s note about Fiona mirroring Rapunzel, Snow White, and every princess rolled into one—yet still singularly herself.

Cultural Echoes

Twenty-first-century listeners latch onto the song as a relatable anthem for stalled dreams—job hunts, pandemic lockdowns, visa paperwork. Whenever fans tweet “I Know It’s Today” alongside gifs of loading screens, they invoke Fiona’s defiant clock-punching spirit. This keeps the I Know It’s Today Lyrics relevant far beyond Far Far Away.

If Rapunzel had her braid, Snow White her glass coffin, and Pinocchio his whale, Fiona has her own mythology: tally marks, shredded pages, sarcastic footnotes, and an unbreakable conviction that a green ogre—or somebody—will crash through the drawbridge today.

Song Credits

• Young Fiona: Leah Greenhaus
• Teen Fiona: Marissa O’Donnell
• Adult Fiona: Sutton Foster
• Composer: Jeanine Tesori
• Lyricist: David Lindsay-Abaire
• Producers: Jeanine Tesori & Peter Hylenski
• Recording: Legacy Studios, Jan 2009
• Genre: Folk-Pop / Broadway Trio
• Length: 4 min 12 s
• © 2009 DreamWorks Theatricals

Songs About Waiting for Rescue

“On My Own” – Les Misérables: Eponine imagines rescue that never comes.

“Dead Girl Walking (Reprise)” – Heathers: Veronica trapped, planning breakout.

“She Used to Be Mine” – Waitress: Jenna addressing her past self in confinement.

Questions & Answers

Vocal ranges?

Young Fiona: B3–D5; Teen: B3–E5; Adult: B3–G5 belt.

Why three actresses?

Song covers 23 to 8 423 tower days; overlapping voices show growth and frustration.

Key modulations?

E ? F ? G? aligning with each older Fiona.

Is “bowler” a Shrek film reference?

No—Broadway adds athletic quirks (Fiona bowls) absent from movie.

Awards & Legacy

• 2009 OBCR — Grammy nominee Best Musical Show Album
• 2023 TikTok #IKnowItsToday challenge: 67 M views (three-part harmony trend)

How to Sing?

Breath: Big inhale before “My white knight” and final canon.
Blend: Match vowel shapes across ages for trio unity.
Acting: Child—wide-eyed; Teen—eye-rolling sarcasm; Adult—mania simmering.
Tempo: 96 bpm; resist rushing color-list lines.

Fan & Media Reactions

“Broadway’s funniest puberty progression in three keys.”

“Tesori’s modulations track hormones better than health class.”

“Every princess song ever—you just have to wait 8 000 days.”