My Lion King Forum

I wondered if we could have a game where we took either an existing musical score from TLG/TLK or even one from elsewhere and tried to make a better villain song than the one from "Let sleeping crocs lie"....

I actually kinda liked the song from a musical perspective (and Oyelowo did what he could with it; I really liked his performance) but it did fail to really impress me mostly because of the arrangement and the lyrics themselves. I mean, if anything on this show deserves a big over-the-top, full-length musical number, it's freakin' ghost Scar on the warpath!

I'm not a lyricist by any means, but I'd totally be down to rearrange the score (which I'm probably going to do anyway) or even write music for a new villain song if someone wanted to put words to it. I've actually been making transcriptions and arrangements of Lion Guard songs for fun since the show came out.

Yeah, the lyrics have been the major issue with the more recent songs in the show. It's a shame, cause it just makes what should feel like epic moments seem silly.

That being said, I wasn't a huge fan of this "I Have a Plan" song musically either. It felt like a very "light" song for such a heavy subject matter and important part in the show's history. Not nearly epic, grandiose or menacing enough. On one hand, I kinda hope they'd give Scar a better song at some point later in the series. On the other, I never wanted him to sing to begin with. Didn't seem fitting for him. *shrugs*

My biggest problem with this song (that I feel qualified to really critique) is how bare bones the arrangement and orchestration is. I personally think there's plenty of good elements here that Beau Black doesn't expand upon in his arrangement; kind of how I feel about most things on this show in the first place.

If it were up to me to arrange it - which I'm going to do anyway for my own edification, so I'm partly just writing this to establish for myself what I want to do - I'd start with adding musical references to "Be Prepared" and "The Madness of King Scar", like a rhythmic intro and outro. Black doesn't really let his songs build toward a climax; most times the songs themselves don't have a proper opening and time to establish themselves before the opening lyrics. Granted, it's not always necessary, and I don't know if it's his songwriting style or just time restrictions the show places on him tokeep songs as brief as possible, but it would definitely help in this case.

The verse section isn't bad at all, but the chorus section definitely falls short to me; I haven't yet figured out why this is, but most of the choruses end up disappointing me. In this case, I think it's just because the chorus is its own short section, so we the listeners end up feeling underwhelmed by the buildup of the verse section. Plus, the lyrics are just too repetitive; I hate how there's very little lyrical variation even though Scar is a pretty eloquent character.

Finally, the orchestration is pretty barebones - I think a lot of his stuff is done using synthesizers instead of actual instruments and voices - so I'd definitely expand on that to give it more variety for each verse and chorus. The song isn't too dynamic, it pretty much just stays at the same volume and energy level throughout ('loud and scary') so we get dulled to it pretty easily. It has just enough to sound 'big', but it reinforces my idea that Black and Chris Willis don't really work together on the musical numbers; at most Willis just hears what Black does and writes his score around the song proper. You can tell where the score ends and the song begins, and vice versa, and Black never uses big orchestration in the show's version of his songs, and I really wonder what would happen if he just didn't do that and let Willis do the actual music in the same way Zimmer and Lebo M. worked on Elton John's songs.

I also feel like they should work on the rhymes. I mean... Do my memory fail me, or did he call Simba and Co "suckers"? Doesn't sound like a word Scar'd use.

The song worked up until

"They thought I was defeated,
But pretty soon they'll see;"

then it went downhill.

i don't remember the word suckers in the song

I heard the line as "It's all 'cause"; it makes more sense given the rest of the lyric ("It's all 'cause I rise from the flames so triumphantly").

Yeah, didn't hear "suckers" at any point. But speaking of words I don't see Scar using (and I know I'm being SUPER nitpicky here), I didn't like him saying "crocs". Seems like Scar would think himself as too royal to talk so casually. Just... really stuck out to me immediately that he said "crocs" instead of "crocodiles".

[quote]Black doesn't really let his songs build toward a climax; most times the songs themselves don't have a proper opening and time to establish themselves before the opening lyrics.[/quote]

Very much this. I've noticed this problem too, and it's gotten worse as the show's gone on. I can't stand it when songs suddenly start out of nowhere, unless it's done as a joke. It's also a problem with other things in TLG, such as Mufasa appearing. It's always so sudden and out of nowhere. His appearances never have any time to build up, they just happen super fast. Compare that to Mufasa's appearance in TLK1, which, while is a relatively short scene, the music and scene slowly builds up to Mufasa's shape appearing in the sky, and then it all keeps building up through the entire scene during the dialogue, until it reaches its climax with the line "Remember who you are". Now I'm not expecting TLG to come anywhere close to that scene, but they could give some more time and weight to scenes like that, as well as the songs bulding up.

The song would definitely have benefitted from a slower, creepier pacing. Kinda like the opening to "Be Prepared'. Not every villain song on this show needs to be so upbeat lol.

How would we have felt if they'd used an edited "Be Prepared" reprise, with different lyrics more tailored towards this series? (Something like this, in case someone's unfamiliar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ6HHs65-Xo) Lazy, or good way to go?