BEST DISNEY SONGS! Wrap-up part one

Over the past 20 months, I’ve seen a lot of movies, and heard a lot of music in those movies, so to start off these supplemental posts, it seems only fitting to honor that music. So here’s the first of my seven top 13 lists, celebrating my favorite Disney songs. The next two lists will cover the worst songs, and then a special one for the top 13 villain songs, because let’s be honest, the villains always get the best songs, and it wouldn’t be fair to put them on this list. Why top 13? Because narrowing it down to 10 was too hard and 13 is ¼ of 52. But before we look at the top quartile, a word on my process.

Miss me?

The first thing I did was look through every Disney movie soundtrack on Wikipedia to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything, and writing down every song that I thought might qualify for the list. I wasn’t very discriminating this time around, just pretty much every song that I particularly liked. This left me with about 80 songs. Then, to maintain fairness, I narrowed it down to one song per movie. This was much more difficult, and based on the quality of the music and lyrics, the song’s catchiness and enjoyableness, and the function of the song to the movie’s plot or tone. Then, using the same criteria, I whittled the list down further until I had my top 13. Random trivia: Three movies, The Great Mouse Detective, Beauty and the Beast, and Winnie-the-Pooh, had their entire soundtracks nominated, but none of them got on the Best Songs List proper. Funny, that.

Anyway, without further ado, here it is, the top 13 Disney songs! Click the titles for a link to a YouTube video!

2011 - Winnie-the-Pooh

For the final entry in the Walt Disney Animation Studios chapter in this blog, we turn to Winnie-the-Pooh. Wait, Brian, you are surely saying, didn’t you already do Winnie-the-Pooh? And, you go on to state, it couldn’t have come out recently, because surely I’d remember it. Yes, you brazenly conclude, you have clearly lost your marbles, and forgotten what movie you are doing.

First of all, shut up, jerk. I don’t know why I imagined you to be so mean. Possibly because I had to engage in some activity to purge my mind of negativity and anger, because this beautiful, wonderful movie will not allow it to exist. Yes, there is a second Winnie-the-Pooh movie, and it did come out in 2011. Why don’t you remember it? Well, for some reason, Disney did everything in their power to sabotage it. They released it in the UK four months before the US, and dumped it stateside with pretty much no advertising in the middle of the summer, rather than the cozy late-fall/early-winter release a movie like this needed. It was, in fact, released the SAME FREAKING DAY as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2, and just a week before Captain America. It was released to near-universal critical acclaim, but got lost in a sea of blockbusters and made a pathetic 3 million dollars over budget. Which is a real stone cold shame, because I’m about to make a bold statement after 52 movies: This is my favorite one. Feeling the towering expectations? So am I. So choose your favorite food from the last 51 reviews, and let’s talk about Winnie-the-Pooh.