I just realized something about Disney animated musicals.

[matt_zimmer]

Before Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, they were pretty much all cr*p.

The only good pre-Menken cartoon musical was The Jungle Book and even that only has two good songs ("The Bare Necessities" and "I Wanna Be Like You"). Mary Poppins is strictly annoying earworms, and all of Snow White's lyrics are cutesy drivel ("Whistle While You Work"? Seriously?). "We Are Siamese If You Please"? Strangle me now. Even "When You Wish Upon A Star" is no hot stuff. It's okay, but if THAT was the defining song lyric of a multinational conglomerate there was something very wrong with the landscape.

Disney will rightly get credit for pioneering things in the animation industry that we take for granted. But that doesn't mean the actual quality of the material they put out was perfect. The recent Kang and Kodos Simpsons episode pointed out that Disney wasn't best, it was just first. There is a huge difference.

Comments

[stinkingbishop.livejournal.com]

As a kid, before I picked up on more subtle distinctions like animation technique, I could always distinguish an older Disney film from a newer one by how boring the music was. The opening theme to Alice in Wonderland sticks out to me in particular - I remember thinking "wait, did people actually LIKE songs like that decades ago?"

One exception I should stick up for, though: Dumbo. "When I See an Elephant Fly", "Pink Elephants on Parade" and "Song of the Roustabouts" were all pretty good.

...actually, thinking about it, you might have touched on a problem with pre-1960s popular music as a whole. Thank God for the likes of Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway (whose songs were used in Fleischer cartoons - eat that, Disney!)

[mattzimmer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the racism in Dumbo made it hard for me to enjoy the songs, but they weren't actually terrible.

I actually LIKE pre-60's popular music (jazz, big band, ragtime, swing, torch songs, 50's rock) so it made no sense to me why Disney's music was so bad. It's not like people didn't know how to make a good song back then.

[90scartoonman.livejournal.com]

The racism does make earlier songs hard to get into. Lady and the Tramp, Dumbo, Peter Pan, and Aristocats all had them. I generally agree with you, you can't call most of those old movies musicals anyway, not like the Menken/Ashman stuff which has "I Want", "Palling Around", "Love", and "Villain" songs all worked into the plots of the movies. I do have a fondness for Sleeping Beauty's "Once Upon A Dream", though, it being set to the music of Tchaikovsky. And Fantasia, of course. Real classy!

[mattzimmer.livejournal.com]

Fantasia doesn't count because none of the music is original. But if it DID count it would pretty much be the greatest Disney musical of all time. I love the "I Want", "Palling Around", "Love", and "Villain" title concepts. Did you come up with those yourself or hear it someplace else? If you heard it somewhere else, where?

[90scartoonman.livejournal.com]

I just added Fantasia as an afterthought about Disney being classy with music, not as a counterpoint to what you said. I recently read an interview with Alan Menken about the music in "Part Of Your World" and he said it was supposed to evoke the feeling of flowing water, and I totally feel it.

I got a couple of those names from TVTropes:

"I Want Song" - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IWantSong

"Villain Song" - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainSong

I was just thinking about "Friend Like Me" and "Hakuna Matata", so I just wrote "Palling Around" because that's what those songs basically demonstrate.

[mattzimmer.livejournal.com]

"Falling" from Twin Peaks is a flowing water song too. "Laura Palmer's Theme" is an orgasm song.

[90scartoonman.livejournal.com]

Huh, that's very true about "Falling", just listened to it again. It's kind of a drip-drop that turns into a waterfall. "Laura Palmer's Theme" always freaked me out, maybe it was the orgasm effect.

[mattzimmer.livejournal.com]

Laura Palmer's Theme is one of my favorite songs of all time. It is so rewarding to listen to it crescendo every time. I can play it (and Falling) on the piano too.