Country Sings Disney But Mostly Skips the Classics

I’ve always had a bit of a tough time getting a handle on just how I feel about country music. Most people I know seem to have very strong opinions about the genre. Either they keep their radios tuned to country stations, attend country concerts and post videos of country songs on Facebook or they cringe at just the mention of this very distinctive style of music. I’m more on the fence.

My favorite genre has always been oldies, a solid blend of pop, rock and folk from the sixties and seventies. While there are a few country artists whose songs I consistently enjoy – particularly Kenny Rogers, Randy Travis and Alan Jackson – there aren’t really any whose careers I follow, unless you count this year’s American Idol winner, Scotty McCreery, who had been my hands-down favorite contestant since Hollywood week. And while I consider “Country Boy” John Denver my all-time favorite solo artist, he called himself a “Western” singer, and I agree that cowboy music is a distinct genre and that was where he fit in best, if not in light pop.

Still, there are certain traits that draw me to country music. For one thing, because of its Gospel roots, I find overt Christian overtones in country considerably more often than I do in pop or rock – except for Contemporary Christian Music, of course. Songs like Randy Travis’s Three Wooden Crosses and Carrie Underwood’s Jesus, Take the Wheel reflect this frequent emphasis. For another, much of country music is also rooted in Irish and Scottish folk music, influencing the choice of instruments. This is particularly true of bluegrass, which often incorporates fiddles, bagpipes and other traditional instruments that you are far less likely to find in pop.

Finally, and maybe most of all, country music has a rich narrative tradition. Narrative songs can be found across all genres of music, but the concentration is particularly high in country, which boasts wonderful tales like Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler and Billy Currington’s People Are Crazy. I love songs that tell a story, and when I’m flipping through channels and happen upon a country station, I often stick with it because I come in near the beginning of a narrative song and want to know how it turns out. It seems that more often than not, country songwriters are great storytellers.

While I didn’t expect to find much of the first in the recent album Country Sings Disney, distinctive instruments would help give the songs a specifically country sound, while that storytelling tradition would be especially suited to songs that, while perhaps not strictly narrative in nature, work in service to a story. The album includes 15 tracks, with only one artist getting two songs. That singer is Billy Ray Cyrus, and considering the fact that he is the father of Miley Cyrus of Hannah Montana fame, that doesn’t seem too surprising. What did surprise me is the fact that eight of the fifteen songs are taken directly from movies released in the past decade, specifically Home on the Range, Bambi II, Fox and the Hound 2 and Cars. They’re not reinterpretations of classic Disney songs; they’re the original versions. Yes, they work, but that leaves only seven songs that are truly original to this album. When I checked this out of the library, I was hoping to find long-familiar songs presented in a new way. As it is, the only movie represented on the album that predates the late-80s Disney Renaissance is Dumbo. While I found that rather disappointing, it’s still a nice collection showcasing several established country singers and a number of up-and-comers, including three former American Idol contestants.

Dumbo - This 1941 movie about an elephant whose big ears separate him from his mother but eventually allow him to fly is the source of two of the songs on this disc. The first is When I See an Elephant Fly, sung by Marine and AI alum Josh Gracin. I wouldn’t have recognized him; he seems to be emphasizing a Southern accent more than I remember him doing on the show. This song works well, with a lazy, easy-going tone to it as he sings about all the crazy things he’s seen. I get the impression of a guy sitting on a rocking chair on the front porch of the general store, blabbing to whoever will listen. The piano gives it a jaunty flavor, and the fiddle adds more of a country sound. The second Dumbo song is lullaby album favorite Baby Mine, sung by SheDAISY, a group with which I have no familiarity. It doesn’t sound all that countryish to me at first, but as more voices jump in with harmonies later, it sounds more distinctive and also quite pretty. The guitar also has a bit of a twang to it, and a few unusual chord choices give the song a more minor sound.

The Little Mermaid - Part of Your World, sung by Faith Hill, is the only song here from the 1989 movie about a mermaid who dreams of living on land. I like the gentle guitar work here that sounds almost harp-like, and the string certainly sound dramatic when they swell. An occasional lonesome whistle adds to the Southern flavor. Hill has a lovely voice, and she sings with a plaintive edge befitting Ariel’s yearning state, but her pronounced accent wears on me a bit here.

The Lion King - In 1994, this epic tale, the first Disney animated feature not to involve humans, burst upon theaters. While Circle of Life is the first song I will always associate with it, it’s rather tough to imagine a countrified version of that. Instead, we get Can You Feel the Love Tonight by Phil Stacy, an AI alum easily recognizable by his baldness. While he didn’t make much of an impression on me during the show itself, I absolutely love his live acoustic cover of Rich Mullins’ Hard to Get. He makes a strong emotional connection here as well with his take on the radio version of this love song. It’s a pretty straightforward version, heavy on the guitar and percussion and light on the piano, with occasional violins giving it a fuller sound.

Tarzan - This 1999 movie about a boy raised in the jungle is one of the few Disney animated features of my lifetime that I didn’t catch in the theater, but I still really enjoy it, especially the tender You’ll Be in My Heart. This is written as a song from parent to adopted child, but I’ve also heard it interpreted as a love song, and this version seems to lean that way, particularly when he addresses the subject as “baby.” Of course, in the original version, the addressee actually is a baby, but you never seem to hear parents use that as a term of endearment for their children… At any rate, this version by former AI contestant Bucky Covington is a pleasant rendition with some nice harmonies in it and a heavy emphasis on electric guitar.

Home on the Range - When I saw this 2004 movie in the theater, I laughed myself silly over the absurd psychedelic yodeling of Randy Quaid’s villainous cattle rustler, but the two selections on this album are much more sedate. However, both are simply lifted from the movie, which is the case with everything else on the album except Cyrus’s tracks. These are not Disney “classics;” they’re contemporary Disney songs from movies that, aside from Cars, didn’t exactly make much of a splash. Still, it makes perfect sense for Home on the Range to heavily feature country music. I quite like Tim McGraw’s mellow Wherever the Trail May Lead, which would have fit in very nicely on Pardners, the collection of Disney cowboy songs I grew up loving. It also reminds me of Johnny Duhan’s The Voyage; instead of describing a romantic partnership in terms of a sea voyage, it does so in the language of a trail ride. One of my favorites on the album. I also really like Will the Sun Ever Shine Again, a piano-heavy track that Bonnie Raitt sings soulfully. This one has a touch of a Gospel flavor to it and serves as a lament as she prays for some sign that things are going to get better. A very moving song.

Bambi II - One of three movies from 2006 from which tracks on this album are drawn, and that seems a little strange since I never associated Bambi with the South. While I prefer character-centric songs, these more ambient tunes work well in a movie whose artistry in the animation department impressed me. Through Your Eyes is quite lovely, with acoustic guitar, gentle chimes and pan flute. It gets more up-tempo as the song goes on; I think I like the slower first verse better, but the whole song is a sweet expression of two souls trying to understand each other better by gaining one another’s perspective. This movie is basically about father-son bonding, which makes it seem like it would make more sense with a male singer, but Martina McBride does a nice, affectionate job with it. More striking instruments can be found in There Is Life, which includes banjo, harp, chimes, birdsong and a stirring choir. This is a song of hope for springtime on a natural level and joy following heartache on a personal level. Both are very thematically fitting for the film, and Krauss’s fresh, slightly Celtic-flavored voice seems an ideal vehicle for this message.

Fox and the Hound 2 - Country is a more obvious choice here, since the plot involves Copper, the hound pup, joining a country band consisting of several older dogs. Blue Beyond is a lovely Trisha Yearwood song that wistfully captures the yearning in the stilted friendship between the title characters. Because this movie is a midquel, their friendship is able to remain somewhat intact, but there’s always a sense of malaise that hangs over this pair, as this is one of the few Disney films whose ending is as melancholy as it is uplifting. The song seems to be from Todd’s perspective as he longs for reconciliation with the chum he alienated. There’s a bit of a guitar whine here, a hint of a yodelish wail there, but only in the tiniest snatches. Most of the time, I would be just as likely to identify it as a straight-up pop song. However it’s classified, this tender song of brotherly devotion makes me a little misty and is one of my favorite tracks. We Go Together, sung by Little Big Town, is another friendship song, but this one is upbeat and has a much stronger country flavor thanks to the banjo and fiddle. Focusing not only on the main duo but also on the other friends and neighbors reunited at the end of the film, it’s a cheerful list of down-home similes, all of which are rather more illustrative than Grease’s “rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.”

Cars - This movie accounts for three of the songs on the album, though one is Rascal Flatts’ version of Life Is a Highway, a lively tune that feels a little odd here because it was a cover when it was in the movie. Rascal Flatts does a nice job with it, but it somehow feels a little out of place. Of course, I’ve always found the song a bit raucous for my taste, anyway. It’s a bit of a bummer not to find my favorite song from the movie here, but then I guess it would be a stretch to classify anything James Taylor sings as Country. Instead, we have Brad Paisley’s gentle acoustic tune Find Yourself, a song about soul-searching made more poignant through the occasional mandolins and fiddle. This song eloquently expresses the idea that losing yourself can be a truly rewarding experience, since it forces you to truly figure out who you are. Another favorite. I’m not quite as big on the rockin’ Real Gone, though the lyrics, especially in the first verse, grab me, and I like Billy Ray Cyrus’s version better than the Sheryl Crow rendition from the movie.

While that Cyrus song is the last on the album, his other, which I much prefer, is first. It’s a bit of an oddball here because it’s not from a Disney movie, but as he wrote it at the time that Miley moved to L.A. to star in Hannah Montana, it feels like it fits here. Miley sings with him on Ready, Set, Don’t Go about the tug of war a parent feels as he wants his child to pursue new opportunities but doesn’t want to lose her. Up-tempo but with an undertone of sadness, it reminds me a bit of Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway on her end and the Beatles’ She’s Leaving Home on his, though he is more accepting of the situation, albeit reluctantly.

Country Sings Disney is a curious album because I took it out expecting mostly country versions of Disney songs I could sing in my sleep. Instead, the heavier concentration is on new stuff that has yet to hit classic status, and yet generally speaking, I liked the new stuff better, or at least I didn’t think much was added by countrifying the old songs. The album features a nice cross-section of country talent, and some of the tracks are truly lovely. It’s the more reflective music that really wins me over here, but there should be at least one track to satisfy anyone who enjoys both Disney and country.