It is snappy and sophisticated sweetly sentimental yet full of peculiar twists here's a selection of dark sides and unexpected backstories from every decade to date.ġ. When a Disney song hits, it never quite leaves you.ĭisney music courses through genres – and can ride roughshod over cultural references some details jar, even in the prettiest melodies. At five, I was mesmerised by the music and Technicolor visuals of Dumbo: especially the hallucinatory Pink Elephants on Parade, and the heart-rending Baby Mine (where Dumbo's shackled mother cradles her son through prison bars) decades later, it still makes me sob. A generation later, I inadvertently traumatised my own son by taking him to watch Frozen II he was spooked by the eerie echoes of Elsa's voice singing Into the Unknown.Īs Disney marks its centenary, it's impossible to contain its musical legacy within a single volume or performance the ongoing Disney 100 live tour features numerous classics – including The Jungle Book, The Lion King and Moana – but the songbook continually evolves, studded with emotional hooks. My first ever cinema trip was to watch a reissue of Disney's Fantasia, but my mum had to carry me out midway, because my terrified toddler screams were drowning out the classical score. Sometimes, the force of Disney's sound and vision is unexpectedly intense.

It is simultaneously in-the-moment and timeless. Around a century ago, Walt Disney declared his musical ethos to his team: 'We should set a new pattern, a new way to use music – weave it into the story so that somebody doesn't just burst into song.' Disney music feels woven into our life stories, too its vast repertoire seeps into our consciousness from infancy it casts a spell through our adulthood. Music has always been the true key to the Magic Kingdom.

It goes dark it goes darker still song