Tuesday, February 22, 2011

My Favorite Disney Song is One Most U.S. Fans Have Never Heard

Photo by Peter E. Lee

What's your favorite Disney song?

My picks change often, but Second Star to the Right is always near the top of my list.

Recently, however...and thanks to YouTube...I've been listening to an amazing piece, composed by Disney veteran Alan Menken, that I seriously think is in the running for Best Disney Song Ever!

The song is "Compass of Your Heart," and, unfortunately, it remains unreleased in the U.S. This bold, exuberant, epic song was composed for Tokyo Disney Sea's attraction "Sinbad's Storybook Voyage," and it is flat-out amazing, creating an audio landscape of swashbuckling adventure, grand hopes and vast horizons...

...though I have no idea what the lyrics are! The orchestration and performance convey the general idea just fine.

Here's a link to pretty good YouTube video of the attraction. Prepare for adventure, great designs, awesome music and a dangerously cute baby tiger. Jump to the 7 minute mark to go right to the incredible camels-and-fireworks finale.

It's a stylized boat adventure through a storybook epic full of dozens of cartoon-like audioanimatronics that--while Small-World sized--move with astonishing fluidity. And it's all tied together by the song, which is sung nearly non-stop throughout the voyage with the lyrics changing for each scene.

Apparently this ride originally opened at Tokyo Disney Sea as the slightly darker, non-musical "Sinbad's Seven Voyages," but it didn't attract as many riders as hoped. Eventually the attraction was closed for the transformation into its current musical incarnation. I think it works terrifically.

And I can't get that tune out of my head!

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