How Does a Moment Last Forever marks the first collaboration between Menken and Rice in over two decades; the last time they worked together had been in the "Beauty and the Beast" musical. Menken believes that the songs he and Rice had written for the musical would not have translated well to the screen due to the structural differences between the two formats. One of at least nine significant changes made to the film specifically for the remake, "How Does a Moment Last Forever" was conceived to explain Belle's backstory. Her quest to find out her mother's fate serves, in the plot, as a foundation for
Untitled (How Does It Feel) and the Visualization of the Black Male Body" for his 1999 "Wide Angle" journal, journalist Keith M. Harris interprets the video to be a portrayal of D'Angelo's "discursive play with masculinity and blackness". In his review of D'Angelo's "Voodoo", Mark Anthony Neal of PopMatters wrote of the video in contrast to most music videos in R&B and hip hop at the time, stating "One could call the video for 'Untitled (How Does it Feel)' narcissistic, but in an era when most R&B videos are nothing but 'bling, bling' and booty, D'Angelo's bare naked torso was refreshing". On the video's camera