This past Friday marked the 62nd birthday of a man whose legacy has left a lasting impression on anyone who grew up with the Disney renaissance of the 1990s. I refer, of course, to the awesome Alan Menken, the master of melody whose tuneful compositions earned him a whopping fifteen Oscar nominations and eight wins between 1987 and 1998.
I can't tell you how tricky and frustrating it was for me to try and pare down his accomplished repertoire of songs to just ten for this list. Ask me again tomorrow and as many as five of them could be replaced by songs that don't appear on it today! I also tried to be as equitable as possible to the many projects to which Menken has contributed his music, but still wound up giving a couple of titles multiple spots on the list while many others got shut out completely. Sigh. Such is the bind of a top ten list: you can only pick ten. So I'll start things off by giving a shout out to the likes of Newsies, A Christmas Carol, Enchanted, and Tangled, all of whom came close to finding representation alongside these ten unforgettable ditties:
10. “Poor Unfortunate Souls”, The Little Mermaid (1989)
Certainly one of the better villain songs in the Disney oeuvre, “Poor Unfortunate Souls” drips with malevolent irony, as sung by Pat Carol's juicily condescending Ursula. Menken and his late songwriting partner Howard Ashman knew that musicals don't just need good songs, but need to be able to set major plot developments to music, and this is a prime example.
9. “A Whole New World”, Aladdin (1992)
It came as something of a surprise to me to discover just how many great Disney love songs are sung by only one character. It takes two to tango y'know, and this duet, performed by Brad Kane and Leo Salonga (fresh off her Tony win for Miss Saigon), hits all the right romantic buttons. Give Tim Rice props for navigating overlapping lyrics with clarity and gracefulness.
8. “Be Our Guest”, Beauty and the Beast (1991)
As though the first two production numbers in Beauty and the Beast weren't fun enough, we get treated to this bona fide showstopper. Jerry Orbach interprets Ashman's nimble lyrics with loads of 'Lechaveliesque' panache, but the animators and storyboard artists (clearly influenced by the choreography of Busby Berkeley) are the real stars of the sequence.
7. “Belle”, Beauty and the Beast (1991)
I won't go so far as to call it the “best” song in the film (stay tuned), but I would argue that it is the most important. It efficiently defines the setting, the characters, their goals/motivations, and immediately establishes the film as a Broadway musical, not merely a movie with songs. Stage vets Paige O'Hara and Richard White perform it tremendously, and all the aural elements are perfectly mixed.
6. “Feed Me”, Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Even though this villainous plant is hardly a vegetable (especially thanks to Lyle Conway's terrific animatronic), the fact remains that Audrey II's movement is kinda limited, both on film and on stage where Menken and Ashman originated him. So they knew he needed a really punchy song to announce his threatening nature. That staccato base rhythm does the trick, and Levi Stubbs' vocals are great fun.
5. “I Won't Say I'm In Love”, Hercules (1997)
Menken and lyricist David Zippel had originally cooked up a romantic ballad for Meg (Susan Egan) to sing, but eventually figured that it didn't fit well with her spunky cynicism. They ended up going with this more up-tempo piece (with backup-singing Greek chorus to boot), much to the character and the film's benefit, marking the last great musical sequence (albeit an atypical one) of the studio's renaissance.
4. “Colours of the Wind”, Pocahontas (1995)
Some kvetch about this song being too preachy about appreciating nature and whatnot, but I think Menken's beautiful melody and Stephen Schwartz's poetic lyrics (sung nicely by Judy Kuhn) wonderfully capture the spirit of the film. The artwork that goes along with this sequence is every bit as exquisite as the song itself; swirls and eddies of colour mirroring the ebb and flow of Menken's swelling strings and woodwinds.
3. “The Bells of Notre Dame”, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
It's a shame that the actual film turned out to be such a dud, because Menken's score (again accompanied by Schwartz's marvellous words) is arguably the most technically accomplished feat of composition of his career. This gloriously epic prologue sets a rich, dramatic tone for the movie on which it sadly couldn't follow up, but that doesn't diminish its initial hair-raising effect. Love that high-D Paul Kandel hits at the end!
2. “Beauty and the Beast”, Beauty and the Beast (1991)
This song and its accompanying imagery have not only become something of a signature piece for the film, but also a high watermark of filmmaking for the studio. With tender piano chords and Angela Lansbury's lilting voice, it captures the essence of the love story with great sensitivity, and then lets them free with soaring strings that lift us up along with them as the camera swoops in upon the unlikely lovers dancing in a majestic ballroom (accomplished through what were, at the time, ground-breaking enhancements in 3D animation technology).
1. “Part of Your World”, The Little Mermaid (1989)
Jeffrey Katzenberg, Disney's relatively inexperienced Animation Chair in the mid-eighties, personally wanted to excise this number from the film, feeling that its slow build and introspective focus would not hold the attention of younger children, but Howard Ashman fought hard to keep it in, and the film is invaluably better off for it. Not only is it an absolutely gorgeous piece of music upon which to feast one's ears, but it introduced a depth of character never before seen in Disney's fairytale heroines, one that the studio would take a step further with Beauty and the Beast. Jodie Benson's lovely performance conveys the meaning of Ashman's lyrics with heartbreaking sincerity. Simply put, this song makes the movie.
