"On `The Little Mermaid,' my first film score, I went back and looked at a lot of different animation, and it all touched me," he said. Menken, 45, came to Disney with 25 years of writing musicals under his belt (including "Little Shop of Horrors," with Ashman) but absolutely no film experience.
Menken, meanwhile, is almost finished recording the music for Disney's follow-up animated feature, "The Bells of Notre Dame," for which he collaborated with Stephen Schwartz, the lyricist who also worked on "Pocahontas."Īnd Menken and David Zippel (best known as the lyricist for the musical "City of Angels") are almost done with the music for the Disney film after that, "Hercules." The two pop songs on the album, "Colors of the Wind," sung by Vanessa Williams, and "If I Never Knew You," sung by Jon Secada and Shanice, are being played regularly on the radio. My 3-year-old just loves your songs.' And I'm now able to translate that in my brain into, `I love your songs.' "Ī mix of grand musical numbers, evocative instrumentals and pop songs, Disney soundtracks are becoming big business and have been dominating the top-10 spots on the music charts ever since Menken, along with Ashman, who died in 1991, started composing them in 1987.īefore "Pocahontas" was even released in theaters last month, 2.5 million copies of the soundtrack were shipped to stores (more than any other Disney soundtrack). "And I get upset when someone comes up to me and goes: `Alan Menken, it's nice to meet you. "I would be less than honest if I didn't express a certain frustration when the animated projects are referred to as `for kids,' " said Menken, who also composed the music for Disney's Grammy-winning animated films "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" and parts of "Aladdin" with Howard Ashman, the lyricist."They're not kids' music," he continued. Publicity agents for Alan Menken, who composed the music for "Pocahontas," warn reporters not to mention the phrase "kids' music" around him.