Walt Disney 60874
Executive Producer: Chris Montan
Track listing: The Virginia Company [chorus] / Ship at Sea / The Virginia Company (Reprise) [Chorus and Mel Gibson] / Steady as the Beating Drum (Main Title) [chorus] / Steady as the Beating Drum (Reprise) [Jim Cummings] /Just Around the Riverbend [Judy Kuhn] / Grandmother Willow / Listen with Your Heart I [Linda Hunt and Bobbi Page] / Mine, Mine, Mine [David Ogden Stiers, Mel Gibson, and chorus] / Listen with Your Heart II [Linda Hunt and Bobbi Page] / Color in the Wind [Judy Kuhn] / Savages (Part 1) [David Ogden Stiers, Jim Cummings, and chorus] Savages (Part 2) [Judy Kuhn, David Ogden Stiers, Jim Cummings, and chorus] /I’ll Never See Him Again / Pocahontas / Council Meeting / Percy’s Both / River’s Edge / Skirmish / Getting Acquainted / Ratcliffe’s Plan / Picking Corn / The Warriors Arrive / John Smith Sneaks Out / Execution / Farewell / Colors of the Wind (End Title) [Vanessa Williams] / If I Never Knew You (End Title) [Jon Secada and Shanice]
July 22, 1995
1 week
Alan Menken, along with his late partner, lyricist Howard Ashman, was responsible for making Walt Disney a significant chart force in the ’90s. The company scored its first Number One album in 1965 with the Mary Poppins soundtrack, released on the Buena Vista subsidiary. But over the next 24 years, Disney failed to score a hit album, at least until the release of The Little Mermaid. That album reached number 32 and went on to sell more than two million copies. Beauty and the Beast, released in 1991, reached number 19 and 1992’s Aladdin peaked at number six, both selling three million copies along the way. All three releases featured the music of Menken and words of Ashman, who died of complications from AIDS in 1991.
It was in 1992 when Menken first began to work on the music for Pocahontas. Lyricist Stephen Schwartz was enlisted to collaborate with Menken. The two songwriters, coincidentally, were already friends, having been introduced years earlier by Footloose songwriter Dean Pitchford.
Two years later, after Menken and Schwartz first began work on Pocahontas, Walt Disney Records enjoyed its biggest success to date with The Lion King, which featured music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice, and a score by Hans Zimmer. “I didn’t feel any pressure from the success of Lion King during the writing process, because what I do is so different from what Elton John and Hans Zimmer do, and what Stephen does is very different from what Tim Rice does. This is a very different kind of score,” says Menken.
Indeed, Pocahontas marked a departure for Disney. “All the other Disney projects I’ve worked on prior to Pocahontas take place in a mythical land, long ago, and far away,” says Menken. “Pocahontas takes place in a real place, not so long ago, and not so far away, so the score is more literal and more adult. It’s more from the Rodgers and Hammerstein school of musicals as opposed to the Ashman-Menken school.”
Like Disney’s previous soundtracks, superstar talent was recruited to sing the film’s main themes. Whitney Houston was among the artists approached to be featured on the album, but she declined. Instead, Disney recruited former Miss America Vanessa Williams to sing the track “Colors of the Wind” and Jon Secada and Shanice to duet on “If I Never Knew You.”
Appropriately, “Colors of the Wind,” the first song composed by Menken and Schwartz for the project, was the first single released from the album. “That was the song that started it all,” says Menken. “When we finished it, I got a call from [Disney executive] Jeffrey Katzenberg, who said it was the best song ever written for a Disney animated feature.”
Pocahontas hit Number One in its sixth week on The Billboard 200, dethroning Michael Jackson’s HIStory. Menken had met Jackson a few years earlier. Originally, Jackson was one of the artists in consideration to record “A Whole New World” from Aladdin. “You can judge the quality of what you do by the quality of your competition,” says Menken.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of July 22, 1995
1. Pocahontas, Soundtrack
2. HIStory: Past, Present, and Future-Book 1, Michael Jackson
3. Cracked Rear View, Hootie & the Blowfish
4. CrazySexyCool, TLC
5. Batman Forever, Soundtrack