Interestingly there was a little racism controversy over one of the lyrics in this song – people complained about the line ‘where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face” so much that it was eventually revised to ‘where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense’ for remastered reissues. Menken’s music for the song has twisty, serpentine melody that builds on a whole host of stereotypical middle eastern chord progressions and orchestrations, but when it explodes into its chorus off the back of a resounding gong crash, and Adler’s voice erupts like a call to prayer, the effect is sensational. “Arabian Nights” has an Ashman lyric and is performed by Bruce Adler as a mysterious unnamed peddler traversing the vast desert landscape, setting the scene. This contrast is very much in evidence throughout Aladdin, but the two styles nevertheless work very well, with Ashman bringing a raucous comedic edge to the songs performed by the Genie, and Rice bringing warm sentimentality to the Aladdin-Jasmine love story. Rice, on the other hand, is much more of a smooth romanticist, offering more straightforward sentences promoting strong emotions.
Ashman was a lyricist very much in the Sherman Brothers mode, often engaging in clever wordplay, intricate rhymes, and peculiar turns of phrase. It’s interesting, listening to the songs, to note the differences in lyrical styles between Ashman and Rice. Sadly, Howard Ashman died in March 1991, and so never saw his original idea come to fruition, but he and Menken did manage to complete three songs together prior to his death afterwards, Menken asked Tim Rice – who had written the lyrics for classic Andrew Lloyd-Webber musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita – to come on board and complete the remaining songs, while Menken wrote the score. “A Whole New World” also won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year – the first and (to date) only Disney song to win – and the album is one of the best-selling soundtrack albums to an animated film, with 3 million copies sold in the United States alone. The film was not as much of an awards darling as Beauty and the Beast, but the soundtrack certainly was: the music won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, and was nominated for a BAFTA, and the songs “Friend Like Me” and “A Whole New World” were nominated for the Best Song Oscar, with the latter winning. The off-the-cuff stream-of-consciousness comedy that Williams brought to the role changed animation voiceovers forever, and the Genie is now considered one of the most iconic roles of his storied career. The film was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, and featured the voice talents of Scott Weinger as Aladdin, Linda Larkin as Jasmine, and Jonathan Freeman as Jafar, with Aladdin and Jasmine’s singing voices provided by Brad Kane and Lea Salonga, but the real coup was getting megastar comedian Robin Williams to voice the hyperactive blue genie who becomes Aladdin’s friend.
Aladdin wishes to be a rich prince to that he can court the beautiful Princess Jasmine, the daughter of the sultan, but in doing so falls foul of Jafar, the sultan’s vizier advisor, who covets the power of the lamp for himself. The finished film is now one of the most beloved animated films of all time it tells the story of street urchin Aladdin, who finds a magical lamp hidden in a cave and inadvertently releases from it a powerful genie who can grant him three wishes. Lyricist Howard Ashman, who had been a major part of Beauty and the Beast’s success alongside his composing partner Alan Menken, had also been working on a draft treatment for a potential Aladdin movie, based on the Arabic folktale of the same name from the One Thousand and One Nights, and the screenplay went through three drafts before then-Disney Studios president Jeffrey Katzenberg agreed to its production. The enormous success of Beauty and the Beast in 1991 ushered in what is now commonly known as the Disney Renaissance, which brought to an end a period of comparative creative and commercial failure for mouse house, and initiated what was quicky became a decade of constant growth and acclaim.
0 kommentar(er)
