When the Academy Award nominations were announced a few weeks ago, I discovered some surprises in the “Best Original Song” category. Two songs from “Princess and the Frog” made the list.
I didn’t hide my lack of enthusiasm for Randy Newman’s work on Disney’s latest animated feature. I found nothing particularly repellant about the songs in the movie, but almost more importantly, I especially didn’t find anything memorable about them. As I said before, I couldn’t recall a single song from the movie even as I walked out of the theater minutes after the credits rolled.
Do I just have limited taste in music, or did “Down in New Orleans” and “Almost There” simply make the list because they’re from an animated Disney musical? It almost feels like a throwaway nomination: Disney released a musical, the songs from its musicals are always great, so therefore some of them must be nominated.
Then I went back and looked at several of Disney’s past “Best Original Song” nominees. I listened to them again. There’s a reason many of them are on that list, and the reason can be summed up in two words: Alan Menken.
Alan Menken is the composer behind Disney’s film renaissance, scoring/songwriting for “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” “Pocahontas,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Enchanted,” and more. He received Oscar nominations, and in multiple cases won the statue, for each of those movies.
To an extent, nominating an Alan Menken song for an Academy Award is like nominating an animated film by Pixar or Miyazaki (though to my great sadness and the Academy’s shame, the latter doesn’t hold true this year): it’s a given. But it’s a given for a very good reason.
I haven’t seen “Pocahontas,” or “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” in a decade, since they first came out, and haven’t listened to the soundtrack for either in almost as long. But I can still recall some of the songs for each of those movies, and would still probably be able to sing along to either soundtrack. Such is the genius of Alan Menken.
Clearly, given that Menken has written songs for both famous and forgettable Disney films, his music cannot all by itself transform a weak movie into a memorable one. But try to imagine any of what I call the “big three” (“The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin”) without their soundtracks.
Impossible, isn’t it? Great music might be just one building block of a strong Disney film, but it’s one of the most important pieces. Menken might not be the only composer behind Disney’s strongest soundtracks in the past 20 years (think Elton John with “The Lion King”), but I’d argue he’s the best.
Maybe it’s because my generation grew up on Menken’s music with our favorite Disney films, but it feels like he’s the quintessential Disney composer. When Disney’s ready to lavish its magic on another fairy tale, they’d better call up Menken or it just doesn’t feel the same.
Luckily for us, Disney is still mostly in the habit of doing so. Menken’s working on “Rapunzel,” Disney’s next animated feature due out this November. The studio also hired him for “The Snow Queen,” but now that film’s future is uncertain.
No matter what happens with “The Snow Queen,” I’m glad Disney’s shown that it’s sticking with Alan Menken. He’s composed my all-time favorite Disney scores and songs, and a Disney fairy tale just doesn’t feel the same without him.
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