5) Soundtracks
If nothing else from Disney has lasted with us into adulthood, it is almost certain that some of the music will have. Some of the musical numbers even got their own mini-movie versions (the Sing-a-Longs), but the real magic of the Disney soundtrack is its ability to transcend its movie entirely. Under the Sea, The Bare Necessities, The Circle of Life – the older we’ve become and the more experiences we’ve had, the more we can (secretly, it’s alright, I get it, secretly) appreciate the power or just the simple joy of these songs, and the more we often find that they’ve won themselves an eternal place in our hearts. (Except for The Lion King’s I Just Can’t Wait to be King, which for anyone who had the game on Sega Mega Drive and remembers the corresponding level, will quite likely induce some pretty unpleasant flashbacks. The monkeys man…..those damn monkeys…)
Quite often, Disney would include an end-credit version of the movie’s principal song, to give the soundtrack some kind of credibility for the adult market; Christina Aquilera’s Reflection (for Mulan), Eternal’s Someday (for The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and of course, Elton John’s original versions of his Lion King tracks are among the most obvious.
But here’s the thing. Despite the fact that many of Disney’s tracks can stand alone as meaningful songs in their own right (Beauty and the Beast’s Tale as Old as Time, or Tarzan’s You’ll be in My Heart, for example), the ‘grown-up’ versions are about as necessary as a diamond vacuum cleaner. The in-movie musical sequences – that is, the songs accompanied by their animated scenes – are often precisely what make the songs what they are. Mary Poppins’ Chim Chim Cheree without the visuals? Bunch of nutters singing about choosing brooms. Aladdin’s Friend Like Me without Genie’s wonderful, frenetic demonstrations of his powers? May as well watch the film with a blindfold on.
Such is the brilliance of Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz, Tim Rice, Howard Ashman and others, that their music is designed to flow in and with the on-screen images – it’s what gives them their true meaning, and one of the reasons that we remember them so clearly years later. I have heard entire renditions of A Whole New World, complete with perfectly timed male and female parts, coming from the landing of a University college block – and that was only after everyone stopped arguing over who got to sing the line ‘don’t you dare close your eyes.’ This stuff still matters. (Well, at 3:30am on a Tuesday night it does anyway).
But it’s not just nostalgia that keeps Disney music alive among adults. At least, not any more….
Since the release of Frozen in 2013, sales of its soundtrack have reached 3 million (and are still rising). To give this a little bit of perspective, if that number were kilometres, then that’s enough copies to cover the distance to the moon and back more than 4 times. Overall, the Frozen soundtrack was at number one in several countries for almost 6 months, making it the most popular Disney soundtrack in history (and outstripping a fair proportion of marriages at the same time). And given the fact that the internet almost broke with the amount of Let it Go covers/spoofs/imitations/bro-mance versions/YouTube hits and, er, adult interpretations of the lyrics – I am willing to hazard a guess that it wasn’t just the children of the world who were responsible for all this.
Frozen was, by all accounts, a complete phenomenon, and to some a mystifying one at that. But it is definitely one of the most perfect examples of the fact that beautiful and music is still streaming from the Disney studios with all the power that it ever had, and it has broken the ice once and for all when it comes to entirely legitimizing that music for adult audiences.
One last thing about the lasting impact of Disney’s music – just in case this has all become a bit serious and you preferred the more fun discussions about the obvious adult influences in Disney films. There is one musical sequence that will never, ever, ever, however much Disney argue and insist, be able to claim that whoever created it was sober: Dumbo – Pink Elephants on Parade (which you can see in the video below).
We’ll have what he’s having.
