Definitive All-Time Disney Original Song Bracket Battle: It's the Circle of Life

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That’s my man Paul Kandel hitting a D5.

Rumors are that he had to split the recording into two sessions. The first was for the rest of the song–the second was to come back for the D5.

Here’s a recent live recording of it with David Lakshøj Hansen performing lead vocals. I leave it to you to say whether he did it better :eyes:

In all seriousness, my gold standard for tenors is Luciana Pavarotti’s C5 at the end of the famous “Nessun Dorma.” Here’s his final performance of the song before his death. He is lip syncing so as to avoid any possible hiccup in what he knew would be his final performance, but the emotion on his face is real. He knew what was about to come.

I also followed Jame Labrie from Dream Theater for a long time for his sort of operatic sound, though he’s of course relied more on a mixed voice and falsetto as he’s gotten up there in his years. Here he is hitting an F#5 in “Innocence Faded” (after the “wearing apathetic display” lyrics around 2:10) way back in the 90s vs 12 years ago for the Score concern vs how he sounds singing the same passage today.

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  1. I’m with you all the way on this one. A lot of the vintage Disney songs are struggling in the face of newer hits, but the Parent Trap should have gone with some kids who weren’t so grating on my ears if they wanted this song to advance. I was about to say I won’t be voting for it a second time, but now I’m not so sure, since it’ll face…
  2. Everybody Want’s to Be a Cat is a much more fun song, but man, slapping gross Chinese stereotypes on a Siamese cat is pretty awful. But I can’t vote for the Flight of the Navigator theme. I watched that movie a bunch as a kid, and had I not known this was the theme from it, I wouldn’t have been able to pick it out blind. It’s not nearly distinct enough.
  3. I actually like Whistle While You Work over both Heigh Ho and the Brave song. This Brave song doesn’t really hit me as much as the first.
  4. I watched a ton of Robin Hood as a kid, too, and I was nervous that I’d attached too much personal nostalgia too it when the first couple of songs got their clocks cleaned. But, later submissions have held up, so it looks like it deserves to be here. That said, I think this is my least favorite Robin Hood submission, and I think Shiny is a pretty solid villain aria.
  5. I think some criticism that Into the Unknown is trying a little too hard to be Let It Go all over again is valid, but it’s still a much better song.
  6. I liked the That Darn Cat theme much more than I expected to, but it’s not the song to dethrone Circle of Live. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Tsivenyaaaaaaaaaaaaa or however you spell it have got to be the most iconic 4 opening notes in this whole bracket, and they’d contend with just about anything outside of this bracket, too.
  7. Most Disney songs don’t strike you as being from a particular era most of the time, but WOW is Streets of Gold 80s. That alone kinda takes me out of the moment of the song. A Dream holds up better here.
  8. I’ve never seen any Herbie content, so it doesn’t really have the emotional associations for me that it seems to have for other people. What Else Can I Do is weaker Encanto material, but it’s enough for me to vote for it.
  9. Tough battle between an overture and a climax. The latter may be a bit more emotional, but I think I prefer the grander music of the former.
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Could have sworn Let It Go was also copying a former very popular song, but for the life of me I can’t remember what the controversy over composition was anymore

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Who remembers this jam?

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Love the clip, and I’d love to get your vote on any of this block of songs before things wrap up at 12:30 pm PDT.

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I see we have another Tarzan fan ready to join the campaign

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Well, it finally happened. We had not just one but two unanimous decisions this round, Circle of Life over That Darn Cat, and A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes over Streets of Gold. I thought the two songs that got blanked were a fair bit better than some others that escaped that ignominy, but I suppose it also depends on the strength of their competition. Circle of Life may just be the strongest contender to not earn a bye, and A Dream looks underseeded as well.

Also advancing out of the first round are Heigh Ho, Everybody Wants to be a Cat, Whistle While You Work, Whistle Stop, Into the Unknown, What Else Can I Do?, and The Bells of Notre Dame.

We’ve now gone from 105 songs to 64. No more byes, so every song going forward will have to earn your vote.

Movies that have no more songs in contention:
20000 Leagues Under the Sea
A Goofy Movie
Davy Crockett
Enchanted
Flight of the Navigator
Oliver and Company
Ratatouille
Tangled
That Darn Cat
The Fox and the Hound
The Love Bug
The Parent Trap
The Three Caballeros
Tron: Legacy
Turning Red
Up
Wreck It Ralph

Movies with the most songs remaining:
The Lion King and Encanto (5)

Movie with the most songs to make it through the first round without a bye:
The Lion King (4)

Movie with the most attrition:
Tangled (3)

Movies with the most first round victories AND zero attrition:
Mary Poppins and Frozen (3)

First round record of songs from movies prior to 1987: 14/27

First round record of Pixar movies: 4/8

Movies we have yet to hear a song from:
101 Dalmatians
Monsters Inc.
Mulan
Pinocchio
Song of the South
The Muppets
Toy Story 3

Movie with the most byes:
Encanto (3)

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Also, congrats to @eyebooger, @chuckleslovakian, and @Uethym who I think are the only people who have the full sets of their nominees still in the competition.

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Not me technically because The Mob Song got bounced.

It did go up against another song I nominated, so a 100% survival rate wasn’t possible.

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Yeah, I missed that in one of your later nominations. And I also realized I left your nominee of Be Our Guest off the list entirely, so we’re gonna have to have an emergency extension on round 1.

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6 Seed: You’re Welcome - Moana

vs

27 Seed: Be Our Guest - Beauty and the Beast

#6 You’re Welcome - Moana vs. #27 Be Our Guest - Beauty and the Beast
  • #6 You’re Welcome - Moana
  • #27 Be Our Guest - Beauty and the Beast
0 voters
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You’re Welcome was the lowest seeded song to have a bye, so it gets thrown into the fire here. This is not a terribly fair matchup to either song, which both should have been up against a more speculative submission, but this matchup is emblematic of the kinds of choices we’re going to be making in the second round.

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I guess I had assumed that Be Our Guest got a bye (rather than me being the only one to nominate it?).

Sorry Moana song; you aren’t bad but a 6 seed is silly.

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Dwayne Johnson Singing is perfection. Everyone voting against this is wrong.

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I see what’s happening here.

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You’re face to face with greatness, and it’s strange.

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You don’t even know how you feel… It’s adorable.

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I think the most confounding variable for this tournament is that most of the voters are 35-45 year old men. If the age 8-14 demographic were better represented, we’d see a skew towards newer productions.

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Hey, I got 4 new people invested in this, two adults and two minors, all female. Not only are others encouraged to do the same, but there’s already at least something of a sanity check on middle aged dudes.

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