"The song is what starts things off."īut in the midst of writing music for Aladdin, Ashman passed away tragically at the age of 40. "In this case, we're kind of the architect that plans where this all goes," he says. While the duo had started writing for the stage, they found that the process of writing for animation wasn’t dissimilar it all came down to identifying the dramatic moment. "I find with songwriting for a musical or for a movie, it’s a lot easier to hone in on the style," he says. The writing process for the music that would become "A Whole New World" took only about 45 minutes, Menken recalls. Rosewater." The two hit it off, and moved forward by writing the smash adaptation of "Little Shop of Horrors." Disney took note, and brought the two in for 1989’s The Little Mermaid. By the time work began on Aladdin in 1991, Menken and Ashman had won four Oscars and been nominated for four more, not to mention countless other awards. Long before Aladdin, Menken made a major breakthrough when he connected with playwright Howard Ashman for a musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s "God Bless You, Mr. Here, Menken, lyricist Tim Rice, and the original voices behind Aladdin (Brad Kane) and Jasmine (Lea Salonga) recount their own magic carpet ride in creating "A Whole New World." "Sometimes it's just something ineffable that happens in the room, that happened in the context of how it's used, and it just takes off. "You can't calculate every element of what makes a song timeless," Menken tells the Recording Academy from his studio. It shouldn't come as a surprise that, even decades later, Hollywood would opt to revisit the story of Aladdin. 25 years ago, at the 36th GRAMMY Awards, Menken's unforgettable ballad "A Whole New World" became the first (and is still the only) Disney song to ever win a GRAMMY for Best Original Song. Having contributed to such Disney classics as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, he is arguably best known for his work on the 1992 animated masterpiece Aladdin, and now, its live-action follow-up starring Will Smith, Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott. GRAMMY-winning composer Alan Menken is behind some of the most iconic moments in Disney music history, and he’s certainly one to trust when it comes to both songs and love. You could be in the room with somebody who may look a little strange, but it's just, 'Oh my God, I'm in love.'" New books being added regularly."Songs are like love. You could be in the room with the most beautiful or handsome person in the world, and it may not be love.
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