Okay, so it’s not my favorite song anymore. But it was. This essay was written as part of a little thing that Nick Hornby ran to help advertise “Songbook,” a book full of essays about his own favorite songs. It won me a free copy of his book. Sweet. Excerpt follows:

Aren't their headers funny? Ha ha...ha...*cough*

“A W H O L E
N E W W O R L D ”
F R O M A L A D D I N .

BY TOMMY WALLACH

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The day the Aladdin soundtrack came out I was one of the first kids on line. Beyond the fact that Jasmine is the hottest cartoon character short of Jessica Rabbit, my favorite part of the movie was the music. When I watched it, I was forced to silence two well-meaning but over-exuberant twelve years old who had somehow already managed to have memorized all of the music by the three o’ clock show on opening day; displaying my most withering glare and all the authority I was capable of mustering, being twelve myself, I shut them down.

These were the days when Disney still let the music ride over the plot and character. When, like in the Fosse musicals of yore, the only real point of the plot was to facilitate the transition from one fantastic showstopper to another. Ironic then that Aladdin is one of only two of the quadrumvirate of modern Disney movies (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King) that has not been placed on the big stage. Maybe it was the technical nightmare of the magic carpet, or fitting Robin William’s ego into a giant blue hot-air balloon.

Read on…