What Makes Disney Music Sound Nostalgic 

I'm guessing Hades doesn't have a villain song because there's no way James Woods could sing. And that part was written specifically for Woods. As for the gospel, I've always been on the fence... I like gospel, not hating, but I've never been totally convinced it really fit the movie. It felt a little too much like Menken going back to his comfort zone and recycling Little Shop.

@@jasonblalock4429 my view is that the gospel music emulates the style of music in ancient Greek theatre- a chorus singing together to explain the plot

YES

TrueMohax New York City* Phil*

Kevin Pauly Wow I haven’t seen that movie in a while if I’m making those errors. I’ve never been to New York before and I have heard the movie compared to Vegas so haven’t really thought about it any differently. New York makes sense, but it still was the main drawback of the film.

😄

And it was just before I thought they were going to start talking about the good films like Little Mermaid.

Duh that's why the video is 20 minutes long to tell you the other half

Sideways in a nutshell

So is he

12:41 you are welcome

AgentQV how dare he! That’s still my fav disney song

He wanted to cut the song because it was slower and had less imagery than others and he thought that young children wouldn’t sit through it, calling it a “wiggle moment”. I think that Howard Ashman refused to have the song removed from the movie because it would really help the story and help the audience understand Ariel more. They had some stuff about The Little Mermaid and Part of Your World in a documentary about Howard Ashman on Disney+. (Edit: it says a bit about it right near the end of the video).

Without Part Of Your World, the movie wouldn’t resonate nearly as deeply as it continues to do. IMO it’s one of the greatest I Want songs of all time. And Jodi Benson’s delivery - a master class.

@@shazza9975 That kinda is the emotional centerpiece I remember from the Little Mermaid... Even though I watched it when I was like 6 and can't remember anything else plotwise.^^ Just think how ridicioulous it would be to remove it... lots of 'kids'-movies have a strong element of "Longing for *something*", and that song just captures that so perfectly.

Well, he didn’t want to remove it just because. That person who got distracted during the preview of the movie made him doubt the song.

That would be great.

This comment needs more attention so he can see it. That movie and its music are both such underrated masterpieces

DigiSketch YES!!! There is the scene where Moses is sing/arguing with his brother during the plagues, that SONG IS MY LIFE

There can be miracles!!!

i absolutely love the prince of egypt this is a must!!!!

I think I'd say it's both :)

I wouldn't say it's timeless. I can definitely correlate the old films with the old days

​@@Sophia-fk6km That's an excellent point. Nostalgic might be more appropriate in that sense, then. It's nostalgic to different people in different decades.

1:35 ? :)

@@autumnh2557 Indubitably.

Howard was a visionary producer/director in much the same way Walt was, perhaps more so since he understood the technical elements of dramatic and theatrical story telling as well as the key role of music as an emotional vehicle. Had Howard not died there would have been another near decade of legendary films from Disney. He was the missing piece of the puzzle for their success after Walt's death. The ebb and flow of the company has hinged on that that type of genius and is often handed over to mediocre talents and suits who just want to squeeze profit for stock options.

@@praestant8 Wow... now I kinda wish I was in the reality where he didn't die.

Modern Disney is made with a message in mind, where as Ashman Disney was made with love. Nuff said

@Josh Dunne No. There was clearly a message in mind. Being THE MESSAGE Disney uses now. Say what you want about Disney in the 1970s and early 1980s, but they did a lot of innovation. You think Walt would do children’s animated films forever? Ron Miller (Walt’s son-in-law) who served as a top executive in the company until he got fired by Roy E. Disney, recalled a time in the early 1960s where he saw “To Kill A Mockingbird” with Walt, and Walt said “That’s the kind of film I want to make.” I doubt it was the anti-racism message, and more of the dark tone it had. However, Walt never got to it due to the company having that reputation. Throughout the 1970s, Miller got more and more power, and he finally put together the first PG movie in 1979 called “The Black Hole.” (Keep in mind, this was before PG-13 was a thing) Thought not the biggest hit, it made money, and it showed that Disney was ready to move in from kiddie movies, to more mature stuff. If it weren’t for Miller, “Tron” (One of the first movies to use CGI) probably would have never come out. He formed Touchstone Pictures in 1984 before he got fired, and it proved to be a moneymaker for Disney after he left. As “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” “Good Morning Vietnam,” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas” just to name a few. Heck, Touchstone’s first movie “Splash” is the reason why “The Little Mermaid” almost never got made, and why Ariel is a redhead.

Couldn't agree more. If Howard Ashman wouldn't have gotten sick and passed away I would have died to have him as the head of Disney's animation department😭 In my opinion he was the one who inherited the heart of what made Disney truly, fully special.

Like no one ever waaass!!!!!

Ariel is a pokemon trainer.

You've cursed my ears now

@@pinkajou656 TO CATCH ‘EM ALL IS MY REAL TEST

@@Ballin4Vengeance to train them is my cause :)

Nikx Neon 😂

Shows the lasting impact Eisner had

...thats true and so so sad!

Nah, that would be EA. Disney's getting close though.

JKAProductions1 I- 😂😂

coffeestained Straigjt up though!! He doesn’t even have to say it anymore-- which means I’m LEARNING!

i was a bit worried he was an impostor before that showed up

you misspelled "propaganda" ;)

Are they leitmotifs or reminiscence motifs?

Thanks! I didn’t even notice that, guess I blinked at the wrong time XD

Makes sense. The first part of the "Military experience" for Mulan is very jokey, and it comes across more like she's joining a Frat House as opposed to a Military Unit. "Girl Worth Fighting For" is the "End of the Innocence" for Shang's Warriors, as they are hit with the very stark and sobering reality that war is not a game, It's not glorious. It's cruel and takes innocent lives. The "Girl Worth Fighting For" isn't their dream girl, It's the innocent women and children being slaughtered by The Huns. Also, the end of GWFF is when the film stops being a musical and becomes a dark action movie about War. I can understand why the Huns don't have a villian song, they aren't the vain, campy Disney villain. While there are no more musical numbers after GWFF, there is still music. IIRC, there is a musical callback to I'll Make A Man Out You" when the three guys crossdress to sneak into the palace at the end of the film.

@@jeangentry6656 yes exactly!

Holy shit. Is it possible to fall MORE in love with Mulan?

P.S. The trailer for the new one looks really good ❤

Kaley Hansen same I’m actually excited on the action scenes

ＢＡＣＫＷＡＲＤＳ－ＧＩＳＮＥＹ

@@samwallaceart288 You wanna go to Backwards Gisney World?

Mine was different. I read it as disnep and was always confused on why it was spelled like that.

Alinity LOL that is equally great

@@ShadowTheLight i literally thught it was gisnep until i was 8. then it was gisney thankfully, i now know what it actually is.

Ronny Borrelli, if you have Disney + there’s a documentary, named Ashman that is entirely about his life and his work at Disney. Go check it out.

@@smashley4661 It was led by Don Hanh, another Disney legend. The fact that Disney greenlit a documentary about Ashman shows how much his work meant to the company.

Didnt know this, thanks for point it out!

No-one remembers Achmed. (I'm so sorry that's a Starkid reference.)

Haha there's a prince Achmed in Aladdin.

What's the Argentinian film called? I'd love to check it out if it's out there

@@meenadaae El Apóstol but it's been considered lost, I believe the studio that created them burned down.

That sentence had me angry at Sideways before the video had even properly begun.

Ya hahaha

Phil Collins in "Tarzan" is... divisive. Apparently you either love his work on the film to death or you despise it with every fiber of your being. There's little to no in between. I'm on the former camp, though, of course. lol

@@XanderVJ Yeah, in terms of love-it-or-hate-it Marmite divisiveness, Phil Collins' Tarzan songs are the animated movie equivalent of Eric Serra's score for GoldenEye. However, the difference is that the latter soundtrack is good. ;)

i love Tarzan, my husband did a mother/ son dance to you'll be in my heart at our wedding, and i agree with sideways. Tarzan was a transition away from the musical style of the renaissance, which lead to films like Atlantis, emperor's new groove, treasure planet, brother bear, home on the range, all of which did poorly at the box office. just because you loved these movies doesn't mean they succeeded at the box office and that really started when disney started using music as background instead of for story telling. that's how Phil Collins ruined everything.

Presumably he didn't know that's why the popcorn dropped. The real lesson is not to make hasty generalizations based on little-known information.

Oddly enough, I've never heard anyone _defend_ his music in those films. It's good music, but it's jarring and doesn't suit the actual movies themselves. You're watching the movie, immersed in its setting, and then suddenly: Phil Collins is singing to you over the images being presented. His music is distinctive, as is his voice, and it's very unlike the sort of subtle shift into musical numbers explicitly described as being used in the interview about The Little Mermaid.

@@JosephDavies what's wrong with having a distinct music and voice over the animation? it's different, certainly, but i don't see how it follows that it's bad that's like saying the john wick trilogy is bad because keanu reeves is too recognizable lol

@@lounowell4171 Some people liked cohesion and immersion and some people were willing to discard that for novelty. It's a preference thing, I guess.

Thank you! Someone actually remembers Brother Bear and it’s music!

His songs are some of my favorite..

Wouldn't it be Somewhere That's Dry?

Wouldn't it be Somewhere That's Dry? Although, water is not wet, so only land can be wet.

@@ALu-nq8rf I did not invent the nickname, though I see your point

@@ALu-nq8rf Water is not wet in 2019? Really? If something becomes wet by by being covered or saturated by water, that means water is wet. It is covered by and surrounded by other particles of water.

TreeTalk is fire burnt 🙈🙈

I'm kind of reduced to tears now. ;n;

That particular opening score also brings me back to the very first time I ever saw The Little Mermaid as well. I had just learned to walk so I grabbed it and put it into the VHS player on top of the TV in the front living room... I was interested because I had heard about merpeople somewhere and this film, although animated, seemed like it might teach me more about them. I remember sitting on the couch, jaw dropped, completely in awe the second I saw those first silhouetted merpeople. In my brain, I was like "Oh my god, there they are! Maybe they're real?!" despite knowing that the film was animated. I just assumed that almost anything that could be animated had to have been drawn from real life, so that's what made me first start to think merpeople were real. I also happen to have been born to a dad who has always been a professional fisherman. He used to tell me that no one knows just how deep the ocean really is, so we don't know 100% of what's out there. That gave me further hope and I hoped with all of my might that every day he went fishing, he might find a way for me to meet and talk to a merperson. Hopefully Ariel herself. So in a way, because of this movie's existence, merpeople sort of became my first ever favorite mythical creature. I finally did get to meet the real Ariel, though. Jodi Benson. I was so excited that I was finally getting one of my childhood dreams when I met her and she was so nice!

I feel the same way towards Mulan, i have a deep emotional attach to that damn movie and the characters especially Mulan.

Your thoughts about the 'Main Titles' score echo mine completely. I even paused the video just to watch that clip again.

I literally broke the VHS tape of the little mermaid as a kid because once it was over I wanted it to be rewound and played all over again.

Same. Are we twin are some'in?

If you don't know about the guy, please check out Polyphonic, maybe you'll like his style too.

Yesss I’m mind blown 🤯

Well, technically, it was the oldest surviving animated film.

Linnea hahaha

Same here

Same I watched that movie all the time as a kid lol

Me too. I had a cat that I named Toulouse because of that movie.

plus the music is awesome, its my favourite disney movie

If I wasn't allergic to cats, I would've loved a little white cat like Marie. She's so cute!

I loved that movie. My favourite character was Marie

both of them

You look exactly like Ariel.

There’s actually a documentary about Howard Ashman on Disney plus, and after listening to all the sad stuff in the documentary, the music playing during the credits is Howard Ashman singing Part of Your World. Needless to say, there was a puddle of tears on my lap.

He wasn't in the closet. Everyone knew he was a homosexual, but at the time, he kept his AIDS diagnosis secret, which is what you may be taking about.

@Leo McKinnon I kinda see you point.

Honestly the amount of subscribers he has for like 3 or 4 years you been doing this seems Sing like pretty fair subscriber numbers to me

Pande I want to be a future animator...I’m still in high school but what do you suggest I do to make my dream a reality?

I encourage you to try something else first

U have a reason to your opinion?

Do you really want to practice a profession that does not provide you with a fixed employment contract, fixed salary, health insurance, paid leave and retirement benefits? a job that depends fundamentally on your ability to create?

Ilyas Adam Ilyas Adam That’s up to the individual. Yes being an independent animator means it’s up to you to save toward retirement and find health insurance (in the United States at least, where it’s not universal). But that’s just like anyone else starting a small business. Which is what you do as an independent animator. It’s up to the individual to set their day rates based on their financial needs. It’s not something that happens overnight, you work toward it and if you’re successful it’s really rewarding to be your own boss. It’s the best time in history to be an independent creator, the number of platforms you can reach an audience on is endless. If you’re fortunate to be a employed to a team at a studio, they have benefits provided like any other employer would. Having a job relying on creating final products is a high-workload sometimes but if you have the skill and drive for it, it’s no different than grinding at any other job. It’s more work but it’s more fun. A lot of animators go into teaching at colleges while either doing their independent work or while being employed at other studios. I had a professor who is a director at Ted Ed’s RU-vid channel. I had a professor who worked for titmouse while teaching. I had a professor who was a Disney animator. I had a thesis advisor who was also a professor and works for BUCK studio. Hell the musician, Voltaire, taught stop-motion for a long time before they ended the department at that particular school. This was all at School of Visual Arts, one of the larger schools with animation on the east coast. There are countless private and public colleges with art and animation programs that need professors. As artists, there are other fields that we can crawl into. Other side gigs to keep us sustained. It might seem abnormal for the average person, we have the flexibility of being able to hop around if we want or need. All our work constantly building up our portfolios, constantly networking with new artists. Networking is huge. The more people you’re connected to in the industry, the more likely someone will recommend you to fill a position when they have projects that require more hands. This industry is more reliant on your body of work and relationships with peers who want to work with you. You’re more likely to be hired through being recommended for the job by peers. If you learn and understand how to navigate this different industry, there’s no reason you can’t find success.

Still nothing compared to stupidity of Bob iger, he is the Architect of all of disned current Problems, not chapek

I always think "Monopoly"

The Rescuers was a major hit, as well as The Fox and the Hound. This guy is mainly talking about lasting impact on Disney today. When's the last time you saw anything from the 1970s and early 1980s stuff in Disney parks?

It truly is the saddest part of this video. Every moment with him on screen, the loss is felt.

@@JosephDavies I'm so glad I'm not the only one who felt that way.

Me Too. Sideways should do a video entirely on Howard Ashman

Isabel Caballero it’s sad. I’d love to meet Alan Menken someday because he and Ashman essentially saved the Walt Disney company but from these videos you can tell that Menken focuses on the score and writing the music to make it so catchy and beloved, but Ashman crafted his lyrics by having a specific vision for the story, and influenced so many parts of each movie. I wish his time here was longer, so much longer.

He Was Fuzzy Wuzzy As someone who has hair longer than hers, pulling your braid out from your armpit is a normal occurrence 😆

@@heididavison816 LMAO 🤣 I'll bet it definitely feels like it!

Wow never realised that until now hahahaha Thanks, I guess?

@@juavarela1673 You're welcome. Now you'll never be able to unsee it. Haha

Yeah, right? But that's what so smart about Disney, you find a formula and keep working on it because doing the same thing over and over again and expect different is clearly a definition of crazy haha. Yet, when Disney try something new, people say "If it is not broken, don't fix it"( credit to cogsworth ) oh well. hahah

@@anacarone6690 I think the key is having a sense for when the formula is getting stale and to start shaking things up. So many attribute the Disney Renaissance in large part to Bluth leaving and forcing Disney's hand. They had to innovate or Bluth was going to continue stealing their thunder. You're not going to have a competitor to force you to do this though. So that's when you really need a visionary who can see when the formula is reaching its natural peak (Law of Diminishing Returns and all that) and start to push for some changes to bring something fresh.

angie lemons it wasn’t a musical but a pop song

@angie : your glasses are lit! :-p

Only real ones know!! ❤️

ayyXmomo The soundtrack sounds like a collection of great Phil Collins songs...but not really a true Disney soundtrack so much as a concept album that goes vaguely with a movie. I have to say that as a kid, Tarzan the movie didn't impact me that deeply because it felt more like a long music video with skits interspersed than a musical.

I loved this soundtrack as a kid. It's nostalgic for me because I would play it on a road trip with Dad and he loved the songs too.

The soundtrack is incredibly meaningful if you can connect the lyrics to what's going on in the movie. The characters don't have to tell you "this is a terrible thing that's happened, something great is happening" which is very typical in shows/movies, there's a song, but it's MOVING. I can't tell you how many people feel a connection to you'll be in my heart and the whole scene because of the adoption aspect. The songs fit perfectly in the movie to me. Tarzan would never have made sense as a musical movie. It's really a matter of personal opinion. But IMO Tarzan seems almost like a semi-realistic portrayal of a regular movie. Normal movies have music that plays as the characters move, talk, etc music that signifies and adds to whatever is going on at the time, that's what Collins' songs did in Tarzan, IMO.

Phil Collins is awful

OMG THEY ARE

Harry Price ***I don't need sleep, I need answers

DK Baller it makes me so upset :( that’s why I was so excited for Moana when it came out because it was the first original film in a long time

Moana? Coco? Zootopia? Inside Out? Ok...

@@Ooshy yeah good point

@@Ooshy Coco and inside out are actually from pixar. Pixar is the original 3d-animated source of disney. I wish they kept it like that and continued making the original style disney movies.

@@granny435 It's Disney's Pixar. Same company. Same offices. Don't Disneysplain me.

I still love the Tarzan soundtrack. I don't care if it wasn't what some people wanted. Phil gave a great soundtrack when he didn't need to. Plus Lion King has similar songs to the Tarzan soundtrack, but you don't hear people complain about that

@@theluffinater9470 I'm not saying it's not a great soundtrack. The songs are amazing. It's just that it breaks the musical formula. The Lion King had songs sung by the characters. The only songs not sung by characters are for a more... montage type transition or exposition. Even then, The Circle of Life gives the impression of being sung by all the animals gathering for the ceremony. He Lives in You is a weird song in that I can't actually pinpoint exactly who I think is singing it, but it does feel like it's coming from characters in the story and not a narrator - like it's Simba or Raffiki's inner voice or something? I haven't watched Lion King or listened to its soundtrack in... over a decade, so those are the only non-character songs I can think of.

Yeah in fact a common joke BTS was calling POYW somewhere that’s dry😅

He didn't really breeze by it, his topic simply leads up to the movie that brought back the Disney formula.

i havent watched that movie

@@kingkylie9655 No one said you have.

Tarzan slaps

Scoob The Boob same for Brother bear

I agree with you. Phil Collins is a genius and he did amazing in those movies. I think what he should've said is that it stopped at Phil Collins because it was no longer a musical. But the songs are super nostalgic to me from Tarzan, Son of Man and I'm on my Way are my favorites. He should've worded better saying that musical took a break at Tarzan because it's the singer singing, not the characters.

Yes he did! Phil Collins is great!

He’s talking about the detachment that the songs not being sung by the characters (sung by Phil Collins) made, not that is bad music or anything like that. It ended the Renaissance. He has a really cool video about it.

Funny, considering that the Little Mermaid is what inspired Lin Manuel Miranda to be a songwriter and what would eventually involve him in the Little Mermaid remake

@@ezelfrancisco1349 wait, the what? Sorry, I have a feeling that I've heard of this before, but my memory is fleeing me.

Menken is such a genius!!! Like he makes Oscars for Disney! Although some of them were not him and I was shocked, like Randy Newman for Toy Story and the Lopez's for Frozen! But Alan Menken is seriously the one person I dream of meeting in this life to have a chat about his life and composing music comes from!

And Howard Ashman too. You can’t forget his role even though it was limited to the start.

Alan Menken is such a legend. Literally wins 4 Oscars for the 4 first scores he makes. The living person with the most Oscars. He's not appreciated enough.

I highly recommend Waking Sleeping Beauty. It changed the way I think about the Disney Renaissance.

It's an _amazing_ documentary. I only wish it were longer! At this point, I'm hoping for another to fill in with more of the details that have come to light in the time since.

Where can one find the rest of that footage of Howard Ashman explaining classic Disney movies?

@@JosephDavies I understand Don Hahn has been working on a film about Howard that's been to some festivals, so maybe we'll see some more of *that* soon, at least! Very curious about what has come to light since-- Mayhaps I'm not as informed as I thought!

@@Herfinnur I recall that if you purchase Waking Sleeping Beauty, it's all in the bonus features!!

And there's even a small mention of Mr. Katzenberg once again completely failing to understand something and attempting to ruin it with his ignorance! After seeing Waking Sleeping Beauty, learning about his role in Robin's troubles, and reading about his behavior behind-the-scenes working on Star Trek: The Motion Picture in "The Fifty-Year Mission" books, it's a miracle Hollywood has survived this petty, petulant, hack of a producer being involved in so many projects.

Definitely. I grew up behind the Iron Curtain without Disney movies and for me, there's absolutely nothing nostalgic about them.

Man those were the days

This needs more exposure.

@@vampiric13 Why thank you!

If you’ve never seen Little Shop, you’re in for a huge treat.

The resistance is led by dentists.

+++++ Yes. Please. I also have a need to watch. +++++

Other commenters have already said it elsewhere but Tarzan was the beginning of when Disney movies stopped using music as programmatic devices purely for advancement of the plot. They were just... regular ol song numbers from that point on (see: Disney movies that came out in the following years).

Honestly frozen ruined it

I agree with you. Phil Collins is a genius and he did amazing in those movies. I think what he should've said is that it stopped at Phil Collins because it was no longer a musical. But the songs are super nostalgic to me from Tarzan, Son of Man and I'm on my Way are my favorites. He should've worded better saying that musical took a break at Tarzan because it's the singer singing, not the characters.

@@paulalo8181how about Let it Go???

He's just exaggerating, Tarzan or Phil Collins didn't really ruin it. It was just a change, and all that happened after cannot be blamed on that one film. The audience had become less interested in the musicals after all those years of repeating the same pattern. Also Disney Pixar had made a huge success with Toy Story 1 and 2, and I suppose Bug's Life too. There was a lot more competition too at this point, with Dreamworks and others. Shrek alone probably shook the ground a lot when it came out in 2001, and Chicken Little really shows that Disney felt threathened by Dreamworks-humour in the 2000s. Also the musicals were kinda boring for many boys, and with Tarzan and following films they tried to cater more to boys than the sappy, romantic musicals did. So because of this and maybe more reasons that I haven't thought of, they did the logical thing at the time and changed the genre away from musicals because they kinda needed to in order to stay relevant. That's all they did. And it wasn't bad, just different. Still a very good film. And it didn't have to be the end of the era, that happened because of the circumstances of the market and technology, not Tarzan. What happened was the bosses gradually stopped caring about the drawing animators, and focused mostly on the new technology in Pixar and the new computer animation studios, which was the future and what competitors were doing. The old studio got lower budgets over time, but also more freedom to do whatever and not stick to the musical formula. So they made a lot of different films without the same nostalgia factor, until they were shut down after the Princess and the Frog, which seems to be a final homage to the old musicals. The computer animation, on the other hand, seems to have been a bit disoriented at first. What even is Chicken Little? And even Bolt and the Robinsons are very different from what you expected from Disney. They were more inspired by the new medium and the competitors than the old Disney classics. But they have since gotten closer to the Disney feeling. The 3d studio seem to make princess movies with the musical formula, and other films without, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. They manage to provide content for those who want musicals and those who want other types of stories. It's the balance they probably tried to find with Tarzan. Sorry for the wall of text, I just find it so interesting. I grew up with all this happening and have a lot of thoughts about it.

SAME. Hope someone left a comment like this

Ooh, yes! Especially because, despite repeated rewatchings, I can't figure out what some of the leitmotifs are supposed to represent. Like, the music for Valjean's Soliloquy ("What have I done/sweet Jesus what have I done") gets used when a character is conflicted ("Who is this man/what sort of devil is he?"), but I CANNOT figure out what Empty Chairs at Empty Tables is supposed to mean outside of that song (like, it's what the Bishop uses in "there is wine here to revive you/here is bread to make you strong" BUT WHY???).

Throw this comment onto his patreon. It's where he looks for video suggestions. It's free to comment

@@mort0303 Thanks.

@@TheChargingCow I've always pronounced it as "Lay Miz-er-ab" 😀

Here's an idea: Les Misérables doesn't use Leitmotifs. It just reuses its Pool of melodies for musical coherence. The melodies don't have a fixed meaning but get used where they fit the lyrics best. You can see this when you check out the original French concept albun where some songs and lyrics are completely switched around.