Get ready to go on a musical adventure from the depths of the ocean to the turrets of the royal castle: The Little Mermaid’s soundtrack is coming to vinyl in celebration of its 35th anniversary. The album, featuring the movie’s original score and classic songs such as “Part Of Your World” and “Under The Sea,” will be released on transparent splatter vinyl on August 23.
Released in 1989, The Little Mermaid kicked off a new golden age for Disney animation. In adapting Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale, directors John Musker and Ron Clements pioneered a winning strategy for Disney, combining the animation style of the company’s ’50s and ’60s cinematic favorites with a modern sensibility.
A huge part of the film’s success was its soundtrack, which earned multiple Grammy and Oscar wins, racked up multi-Platinum sales, and instantly entered into the movie music pantheon. Alan Menken composed the score and teamed with lyricist Howard Ashman on the songs, all of which are included on the new 35th anniversary vinyl reissue.
Menken and Ashman’s background was on Broadway, where they’d worked together on the hit Little Shop Of Horrors, and that experience translated to the silver screen. “They approached it like it was a Broadway musical,” Jodi Benson, who voiced Ariel, explained in a recent retrospective. “The characters actually run out of words, can’t express themselves anymore, and it has to come out in song.” Though the duo had worked separately on Disney movies before, The Little Mermaid marked their first collaboration for the studio, a partnership that would continue in the coming years on Beauty And The Beast and Aladdin.
Judging by the success of The Little Mermaid, it’s easy to see why Disney continued working with Menken and Ashman. In 1990, Menken’s Little Mermaid score won Best Original Score at both the 62nd Academy Awards and the 47th Golden Globe Awards. At both the Oscars and the Globes that year, Menken and Ashman’s collaboration “Under The Sea,” sung by Samuel E. Wright in character as Sebastian the crab, won Best Original Song. Meanwhile, at the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards, the full soundtrack album won Best Recording For Children and “Under The Sea” was honored as Best Song Written for Visual Media.
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