Search - Various Artists :: Best Disney Album in the World Ever

Difficult to argue with the title

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 07/07/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Best in the world ever series exaggerates somewhat in most cases, but Disney is a specialist label, so the choice is relatively narrow and it would appear that the compilers were able to include the tracks they wanted. I haven't checked thoroughly, but I haven't noticed any glaring omissions. There is no obvious pattern to the way in which the tracks have been sequenced, except that they appear to be jumbled up deliberately. You won't find tracks from the same movie consecutively, though plenty of movies are represented by two or three songs. Lion king is represented by three movie tracks (Circle of life, Hakuna Matata, Can you feel the love tonight) and one Broadway cast track (They live in you), making it the best represented production in the compilation. As Elton John and Tim Rice co-wrote the songs together, this doesn't surprise me.



Looking more closely at the track listing, it seems that the tracks divide into two main periods, which cover the early years to 1968 and the modern era from 1988, with only two tracks from the intervening years. As this is a 2006 compilation, there is nothing here from the period since then. When I bought this, I expected to prefer mainly the older tracks, but I knew that some of the more recent tracks were also of a high quality. If anything, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of the more recent material.



Taking the older tracks first, the oldest track (Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, from Three little pigs) goes all the way back to 1933, but other great oldies include Some day my prince will come, Heigh-ho (both from Snow White and the seven dwarfs), When you wish upon a star, Give a little whistle (both from Pinocchio), Zip-a-dee-doo-dah (from Song of the south), He's a tramp, Siamese cat song (both from Lady and the tramp and both sung by Peggy Lee), Ballad of Davy Crockett (from Davy Crockett) and Beautiful briny (from Bedknobs and broomsticks), along with plenty of others including three tracks each from Jungle book, Cinderella and Mary Poppins and two tracks each from Dumbo, Aristocats, Mickey Mouse club and Peter Pan.



The barren period is represented by Candle on the water (from Pete's dragon, performed by Helen Reddy) and Best of friends (from Fox and the hound, performed by Pearl Bailey). Exactly where Disney went wrong during this period, I don't know, but those two songs are brilliant and certainly deserve to be included here.



Disney's revival began with Little mermaid, which is represented by three tracks here. There are two tracks each from Tarzan, Hercules, Beauty and the beast, Pocahontas and Brother bear, with Toy story, Toy story 2, Aladdin and many others represented by one track each. Reflecting Disney's diversification into TV, there are a few Disney Channel tracks including one each from High school musical and Hannah Montana.



Inevitably in a compilation of this nature, there are some tracks that I rate highly and some that don't excite me wildly (though they deserve their place based on their popularity; we all have different tastes), but nothing that sends me reaching for the SKIP button. If you enjoy a significant proportion of Disney music, as I do, you can't go wrong with this compilation."