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

[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.