Come here, children, gather ’round the computer as Uncle Bob
\ntells you about the soundtrack to a movie you’ve all seen or are
\nbegging your parents to buy you the video of. (Don’t worry, Mom and
\nDad, I’ll watch my language.)<\/p>\n
Alan Menken has been on a roll the past few years, both with his
\nlate songwriting partnet Howard Ashman (
\nThe Little Mermaid<\/i>) and with such collaborators as Elton
\nJohn and Tim Rice. His latest work,
\nHercules<\/i>, pairs him up with lyricist David Zippel, and while
\nit’s not as strong as some recent Disney soundtracks, it is very
\nenjoyable.<\/p>\n
One person I know once complained to me that the main tracks in
\nthe movie were done in a gospel style – never mind the fact that
\ngospel wasn’t around in ancient Greece. This is a definite grown-up
\ncomplaint; you have to allow both Disney and the songwriters a bit
\nof a poetic license when it comes to the music. (Plus, I’ve heard
\nre-creations of music in ancient Greece, in some of their plays –
\nit would drive the kids to tears and the parents to sleep out of
\nboredom. Trust me – the gospel is a better choice.)<\/p>\n
Even Michael Bolton, whom some consider to be the antithesis of
\nreal music, puts in an admirable performance on the single from the
\nsoundtrack, “Go The Distance”. ‘Course, it’s really hard to slam
\nany single from a Disney movie – they’ve been very solid efforts
\nover the last decade.<\/p>\n
What is surprising about
\nHercules<\/i> is the number of vocal songs – or rather, the small
\nnumber. Not including the single or the spoken-word intro by
\nCharlton Heston, there are only ten songs highlighting vocals –
\nthree of these inter-related (“The Gospel Truth” numbers). Having
\nnot seen the movie yet (sorry to my friends at Disney – I’ll rent
\nit soon!), I have to wonder about the placement of the songs in the
\nfilm – I’m used to Disney films with numerous vocal performances.
\nThis just seems, well, sparse.<\/p>\n
Of these numbers, it’s surprising to hear the love song
\nperformed outside of a true ballad style (with Susan Egan handling
\nthe main vocal chores). The movie version of the single “Go The
\nDistance,” featuring Roger Bart as the singing voice of Hercules,
\nis okay, though I thought it stretched a little too long with the
\nreprise. Even Danny DeVito does a great job on his one opportunity
\nto sing (“One Last Hope”).<\/p>\n
But the highlight of
\nHercules<\/i>, in the end, turns out not to be the Menken\/Zippel
\ncollaborations, but rather Manken’s score for the film, which takes
\nup the entire second half of the disc. It honestly is better to lie
\nback and listen to this without following the CD player’s display
\nand track listing; it almost is like placing yourself in the
\ncontext of the film and its score. Menken has done a wonderful job
\non it, bringing back memories of some of Disney’s golden days.<\/p>\n
Of course, the kids will most likely be bored stiff with the
\nscore, and will be constantly playing the hits from the film (hint:
\nanything where the Muses are singing, there’s a good chance the
\nparents will be hearing this for the next two months). But there is
\nenough on
\nHercules<\/i> to appeal to both children and adults – as well as
\nthe kid within all of us. It’s just a nice way to kick back for
\nforty-five minutes and let your imagination take over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5729],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-38667","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-soundtrack","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38667"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}