As a kid, before I picked up on more subtle distinctions like animation technique, I could always distinguish an older Disney film from a newer one by how boring the music was. The opening theme to Alice in Wonderland sticks out to me in particular - I remember thinking "wait, did people actually LIKE songs like that decades ago?"
One exception I should stick up for, though: Dumbo. "When I See an Elephant Fly", "Pink Elephants on Parade" and "Song of the Roustabouts" were all pretty good.
...actually, thinking about it, you might have touched on a problem with pre-1960s popular music as a whole. Thank God for the likes of Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway (whose songs were used in Fleischer cartoons - eat that, Disney!)
Yeah, the racism in Dumbo made it hard for me to enjoy the songs, but they weren't actually terrible.
I actually LIKE pre-60's popular music (jazz, big band, ragtime, swing, torch songs, 50's rock) so it made no sense to me why Disney's music was so bad. It's not like people didn't know how to make a good song back then.
The racism does make earlier songs hard to get into. Lady and the Tramp, Dumbo, Peter Pan, and Aristocats all had them. I generally agree with you, you can't call most of those old movies musicals anyway, not like the Menken/Ashman stuff which has "I Want", "Palling Around", "Love", and "Villain" songs all worked into the plots of the movies. I do have a fondness for Sleeping Beauty's "Once Upon A Dream", though, it being set to the music of Tchaikovsky. And Fantasia, of course. Real classy!
Fantasia doesn't count because none of the music is original. But if it DID count it would pretty much be the greatest Disney musical of all time. I love the "I Want", "Palling Around", "Love", and "Villain" title concepts. Did you come up with those yourself or hear it someplace else? If you heard it somewhere else, where?
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 was just thinking about "Friend Like Me" and "Hakuna Matata", so I just wrote "Palling Around" because that's what those songs basically demonstrate.
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One exception I should stick up for, though: Dumbo. "When I See an Elephant Fly", "Pink Elephants on Parade" and "Song of the Roustabouts" were all pretty good.
...actually, thinking about it, you might have touched on a problem with pre-1960s popular music as a whole. Thank God for the likes of Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway (whose songs were used in Fleischer cartoons - eat that, Disney!)
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I actually LIKE pre-60's popular music (jazz, big band, ragtime, swing, torch songs, 50's rock) so it made no sense to me why Disney's music was so bad. It's not like people didn't know how to make a good song back then.
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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.
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