My Lion King Forum

Like Captain said, Tim Rice was asked who he'd like to collaborate with and he thought of Elton John. At first Elton said 'no', but a few days later changed his mind. (Tim Rice recently said this in a Top 10 Disney Songs TV programme.)

It's great Elton was able to sing songs for this, and it's another way the film has been kept in the public's eye, as he will still play the songs at some concerts. Not the two concerts I've seen him at, mind.

I found this live recording of Can you Feel the Love Tonight? a few months back, and I think he should perform his LK contributions in full more often

https://youtu.be/LujeAEsL6mQ

69 years old today, still doing a ton of concerts, collaborating with modern artists and putting out new albums.

[quote="Elton John"]69 years old today, still doing a ton of concerts, collaborating with modern artists and putting out new albums.[/quote]

Oh is he? Any new song one should be aware of?

Off his new 'wonderful crazy night' album I liked 'in the name of you'. It doesn't hit the highs of his 70's high but it's decent.

And I'll be seeing him live for the 2nd time, in November.
He comes to Belgium very frequently, but so expensive. Very happy that this time around the tickets were more afordable.

[quote="Squeely"]It's probably for the best that ABBA wasn't available. With all due respect to ABBA fans, their music bores the heck out of me, and I get the feeling that their songwriting would be a weird fit for a Disney film, especially one set in Africa. I mean, perhaps it would have worked, because using a British pop star worked. But I can't shake the feeling that ABBA could have easily made this film go from great to awful.

I'm glad Elton John ended up being the one to help write the songs. He feels like the better choice to me.[/quote]

I'm not sure about the song-writing one way or another but compositionally ABBA would have clashed with what they were trying to do with TLK.

Elton John worked with real unaltered instruments, ABBA didn't and with the sorta exception of 'can't wait to be king' most of Elton's work in TLK is real unaltered instruments. The rest of the score also focuses pretty heavily on this and some bits were simply beyond what could be done with electronic instruments. Epic moving music is a strings orchestra* on most occasions and when it's not it's taking notes about how string orchestras work to create that music to replicate it with other instruments.

There's a reason why Apocalyptica still has traction in a world where electronic music is so much easier to make. There's centuries of evolution in the wood and strings of a cello, all responding to something not easily understood in waveforms, what sounds good to the human ear, what resonates, literally and metaphorically. This isn't to say that electronic music is all bad, I appreciate a fair bit of it, but I view them as instruments in need of maturing before they attain the versatility of older instruments.

*This is to say an orchestra with a strings section, not necessarily excluding other instruments

Electronic isn't bad at all. Just doesn't seem a good fit for an African film starring animals that can't even use electronic devices. I could see ABBA fitting a lot better with Wreck-It-Ralph, or Big Hero 6, or Zootopia, all of which contain plenty of technology. With TLK though, it would have likely been a Hercules (Gospel and R&B clashing with Ancient Greek).

[quote="Squeely"]Electronic isn't bad at all. Just doesn't seem a good fit for an African film starring animals that can't even use electronic devices. I could see ABBA fitting a lot better with Wreck-It-Ralph, or Big Hero 6, or Zootopia, all of which contain plenty of technology. With TLK though, it would have likely been a Hercules (Gospel and R&B clashing with Ancient Greek).[/quote]

Yeah I certainly don't want to imply that electronic instruments are bad, just that they're less versatile and haven't yet captured the grand epic the way traditional instruments can and given the story TLK was after grand epic was needed.

Maybe the styles clashed in Hercules but you gotta admit it has a really catchy soundtrack.