After being discovered on the Australian tv show New Faces in 1990, PETER ANDRE has released a half dozen albums and has had seven top 5 singles, the most of any Australian male singer!
In 1998 he released a cover of Kiss the Girl which would end up being his last single as he took a break from recording and performing to look after his new children.
Peter has since gotten back into the business with the release of a new album with his model wife, Katie Price (the album is titled and features a cover of A Whole New World). They currently star in their own reality show and are working on their second album together.
Here is another track from WHEN YOU WISH UPON A CHIPMUNK, an album of Disney songs in squeaky Chipmunk voices. This one is not as bad as the last although it is still not great.
THE CHIPMUNKS, voiced by their creator, Ross Bagdasarian, have made quite a career for themselves seeing as they were created as a one-off novelty act. Dozens of albums, a few tv series, a feature film! They started way back in 1958 and are still going strong today!
My favourite thing about the Chipmunks is that even though they are cartoon characters, they act like real actors. Their albums are recorded as if they are actual recording artists and their tv shows are like reality tv, following their careers (and other adventures).
I hope you like this track as it may be the only Friend Like Me cover you'll hear in a while. Aside from A Whole New World, Aladdin covers are pretty rare.
It was on this day in 1951 that Alice in Wonderland was released to theatres for the world to enjoy!
The title track which was written by Bob Hilliard and Sammy Fain and was performed by the Jud Conlon Chorus, was recorded a few years later by jazz musician DAVE BRUBECK and his quartet in 1957.
This version is a bit different than the Bill Evans version I posted before. The Evans version keeps the 6/8 feel of the original, but Brubeck speeds up the song a bit and plays it in 4/4.
Today is the final day of VOTE 2008 and the one year anniversary of Covering the Mouse!
I'm happy to be able to share my love for Disney music with you! I'll be blogging for a long while so stay tuned, tell your friends and leave lots of comments!
To celebrate the anniversary, here are the ten most popular tracks on this site, voted by you!
Pirates singing anything is always music to my ears. So this version of Part of Your World has got to be good! The best part is at the beginning when he calls this song a "Mermaid Lullaby".
This sure is a popular song! And why not? It's so much fun and is a great representation of the Haunted Mansion! Too bad it's not in BNL's regular repetoire.
No one has covered this Aristocats tune better and more uniquely than Psapp. Their interesting style makes this one fun to listen to over and over again
The fact that John Coltrane turned this song into a standard, and that he recorded a version twenty minutes long, must mean that he really loves the piece! And when you really love the piece you want to make your version the best that it can be. Well done, John.
Despite this song being one of the most annoying songs in history, you have to love the amount of time and effort that went into arranging this piece. Remember, there are no instruments in this version, only voices. Now that's talent.
Pogo burst onto the scene a few months ago with four songs almost completely made up of sounds from Alice in Wonderland. While not a true cover song, Alice and Pogo must be recognized for its uniqueness and brilliance.
It's very hard to take Circle of Life and make it sound different but still good. Collin Raye does this by adding a bit of country bluegrass. You gotta love that banjo.
If the Mickey Mouse Club we on the air today, I would love to hear this version as the theme song. It would get everybody pumped and really to have fun! However, Disney would probably get one of their HSM stars instead. Bummer.
Marylin Manson singing Danny Elfman is really a match made in heaven. Disney was spot on when they asked him to cover this song for the Nightmare Before Christmas' re-release. It is done so well and I agree, one of the best covers on this site!
The top track comes from a Disneymania CD. I know! Who would have thought that?! But Daniel Beddingfield's voice, along with the big band arrangement of A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes definitely makes this song the best! It is really fantastic and deserves the top spot on this list.
That's it! Thanks for celebrating one whole year of great Disney cover tunes with me! Have a great weekend and I'll be back on Monday for Year Two!
You won't be hearing anything good today because this post features the worst of the worst! Cover Your Ears is the worst songs on this site, voted by you!
If a cover is totally unrecognizable then I would say it's a terrible cover. This version of Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee is unrecognizable, therefore it is terrible.
On the other end of the scale, what's the point of covering a song if it is going to sound exactly like to original? Put a little bit of originality in it please!
First we had Disney slapping together all of their Disney Channel stars into one song, so many singers that each only gets one or two lines, then Disney decides to make it a Christmas song?! Since when is Circle of Life a Christmas song?!
I like Disney music and I like the Chipmunks. So naturally, I assume that the two would go together as well as chocolate and peanut butter in Reese Peanut Butter Cups. But no, they don't. They really don't.
As you've probably guessed, this list wouldn't be complete without the American Idol sensation, William Hung! He has made a (short-lived) career of singing really bad cover versions. It's almost like he shouldn't be on this list because he's so bad, but on purpose.
Wow! Three Lion King songs made it on this list? Who would have guessed? Tomorrow is the last day of Vote week and I will bring you the best of the best!
Some songs just shouldn't be covered and It's a Small World fits into that category due to it being the most annoying song in history. So why would the hit a cappella group want to subject their fans to that torture? And why is it on their Christmas album?
Why on Earth would Ed Harcourt want to sing this song if he didn't know the melody? What was he thinking? I like the musical arrangement but the vocal work is a bit too weird.
If you are going to cover a song, why would you make it so unrecognizable that the listener has no idea what the original is supposed to be? While most of Mannheim Steamroller's album is good, this track is definitely weird.
The weirdest of the weird is someone who has probably been called weird once or twice in his life. Tom Waits turns the happy, fun dwarf song into a industrial rock tune. Why? Could it be because he is weird?
You may not want to tune in tomorrow because I will be giving you the worst songs on this site!
Today's category is Most Unlikely Candidate. These are the people you thought would never cover Disney. These are the songs you never thought you'd hear covered. These are the songs you thought you'd never hear in that style.
This KISS rocker is definitely one who you wouldn't imaging covering When You Wish Upon a Star. Isn't he tougher than that? Apparently this song is very special to him and when he covered the Pinocchio classic he wanted to be very true to the original.
Robert Goulet? Really? His awesome cameo in Toy Story 2 was one of the reasons that movie was so great! While I could see him singing Disney songs, I never thought that he would be lend his voice to the Wheezy the Penguin. I guess you didn't either.
Who would have thought that this song would ever be covered? Yet it works thanks to the unique twang added by Michelle Shocked. I'd love to hear more covers of this song but it might be as unlikely as everyone believes.
Out of all the songs to come out of the Winnie the Pooh shorts from the 60s, this one is probably one of the lesser know tracks. Who would have thought someone would cover it. And even more, who would have thought that it would be covered in the Eurobeat style?!
Tomorrow is weird Wednesday as I bring you the five weirdest covers on Covering the Mouse!
Welcome to day one of VOTE 2008! It has been one year since I launched this site and I am happy to say that it is still going strong! I still have a few years worth of Disney covers to share with you so here's to another glorious year!
It's not too late to get your vote in for the other categories! If you haven't voted yet, do it right now!
Today I am sharing with you my top five favourite covers. So enough talking and let's get on with it!
I absolutely love this medley of all of the Disney songs with nonsense words from the On the Record Broadway musical, especially when they start singing all over them at the same time! A few they missed: Oo-De-Lallly, La La Lu, Trashin' the Camp, Passamashloddy, Substitutiary Locomotion.
Being a Disney fan, I have also grown to be a big Andrews Sisters fan. I was introduced to them by Johnny Fedora & Alice Blue Bonnet and Little Toot and became interested in their other work. This cover is one of the many songs they sing with Bing and it is wonderful.
I never gave Fall Out Boy the time of day until I heard this song. Their cover is so much fun that I had to check out the band's other material and it's not that bad! They have recently recorded a cover of Beat It which doesn't hold a candle to Jackson's original but is still good.
No, I didn't pick this song just to be topical. Even though Steven Page got busted for drug possession I still think he and his band are great. And this cover is not exception. I love the original and this cover adds the quirky BNL flavour that truly captures the feel of the ride: Fun and creepy! Also, be sure to listen to this track with stereo speakers.
Here is the first song I posted on this site. In fact, this song was what inspired me to start this blog! I thought this cover was so creative and unexpected that I had to share it with a bunch of people! It remains my favourite Disney cover to date.
That's all for today! Tomorrow I reveal the covers that you thought you'd never hear!
I'm sorry for not posting yesterday. I saw the midnight show of The Dark Knight (which is awesome, by the way) and still had to take in a full day of work a few hours after that. Needless to say, this blog was not a priority.
So here I am on the weekend, bringing you a track that falls under the Obscure Disney Song category. I know that I usually post the obscure track on the fourth Friday of the month, which would be next week, and that this week should be a terrible track, but next week is Vote 2008 so I thought I'd spare you the awful track and bring you something special.
This also brings Disneyland Week to a close. And to finish off the week, we are traveling to Tomorrowland to visit the Magic Eye Theatre which in 1986, was playing the 3D film fantasy, Magic Journeys. The movie, which originally debuted with EPCOT Center in 1982, was basically one giant drug trip. Or at least that's what the description on Wikipedia sounds like. I've never actually seen this show.
Magic Journeys looked at the world through the eyes of a child. The film started with children running through a meadow and looking at clouds. Someone blew on a dandelion and the seeds then flew away, turning into stars and then turned into the sun. Next the kids were seen flying a kite at the beach. The kite then turned into a bird, a fish, a school of fish, a flock of birds, bird wings, a Pegasus, a horse and then finally into a merry-go-round. While the children rode the carousel, they began reaching for a brass ring spinning next to the carousel; it became a moon, a bat, a witch, a mask and finally into the Sphinx.
The show played at Disneyland for only two years, until 1986, when it was replaced by Captain EO, a show that I remember from my childhood visits to Disneyland (anyone have some Captain EO covers?). In Florida, the show was moved from EPCOT to the Fantasyland Theater in the Magic Kingdom where it played until 1993 when it was replaced by the Legend of the Lion King.
The soundtrack to Magic Journeys was written by the Sherman Brothers. This cover is by an obscure Japanese experimental electronic group called THE DOOPEES. The band was formed by YAAN TOMITA whose experimental electronic work has been admired for years. He formed this "pop" group in 1995 with singer SUZI KIM and CAROLINE NOVAC and recorded only two albums. The result was cult status as most people even inside Japan have no idea who the Doopees are.
While this track is nice, it doesn't give you any idea of the Doopees' style. Please visit their myspace page to get the idea. They are wonderfully creative and really odd too! The first two minutes of Love is samples of the word love from other songs! Brilliant!
PS: Next week is VOTE 2008! If you haven't already done this please vote now!
Coming up on July 26 is the one year anniversary of Covering the Mouse! A whole year has flown by since I posted my first song and over 200 songs later it looks like I'm set to go for another year!
To celebrate the anniversary I want to dedicate the week of July 21-25 to readers/listeners choice music! And that's where you can help!
COVERING THE MOUSE VOTE 2008 will be a week long event where you will get to pick your favourite Disney cover tunes from the Covering the Mouse archives. Here is what the week will look like:
MONDAY: Kurtis' Kovers - I will pick my top five favourite covers for your listening enjoyment!
TUESDAY: Most Unlikely Candidate - You never thought you'd hear a cover of this song! You never thought you'd hear a cover from this artist! The top five covers you never thought you'd hear!
WEDNESDAY: Weird World of Cover Tunes! - What were they thinking when they covered this?! These are the top five weirdest covers as voted by you!
THURSDAY: Cover Your Ears! - Your least favourite covers! Often too painful to listen to!
FRIDAY: Cream of the Cover Crop! - The best of the best! The cream of the crop! Your top five favourite cover songs as voted by you!
HOW CAN I VOTE?
Voting is simple. Just add a comment on the song of your choice with the category you're voting for!
For instance, if you think When You Wish Upon a Star by Louis Armstrong is a cover you never thought you'd ever hear, then add a comment to that post that says Vote 2008 - Most Unlikley Candidate! plus anything else you want to say about the cover.
You can vote for as many songs as you like, but please only vote for a song once.
One other thing, please add a name or and alias to your comment. I will not be counting anonymous votes.
Legendary Reggae artist SUGAR MINOTT covers It's a Small World today as we travel to Fantasyland for today's installment of Disneyland Week.
The It's a Small World attraction was one of the few that Walt Disney created with his Imagineers for the 1964 New York World's Fair. The ride was designed by Mary Blair who also worked on conceptual work for Cinderella and Peter Pan.
Originally, the ride was supposed to be called "Children of the World" but when Walt heard the song, written by the Sherman Brothers, he knew he had to change the name based on this catchy tune. It's a Small World (After All) has become one of the most popular and well known Disney songs in history!
It's a Small World has been closed since January to be refurbished by adding a few Disney characters throughout the ride, here and there. It is planned to reopen in November. It's a Small World in Hong Kong Disneyland opened earlier this year with the Disney characters and it seems to have gone over well.
Our next stop on our tour of Disneyland is New Orleans Square where we will find two attractions that are brought together with this cover song.
Grim Grinning Ghosts is the main theme for the popular Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. The original plan when the park was first built was to place a haunted house at the top of a high hill that loomed over the park. Walt was not impressed with the concept and put the project on hold until they were looking for attractions for a new section of the park, New Orleans Square, that would replace the unpopular Holidayland.
In 1961, the park started construction and advertising the Mansion but the project was still delayed because Walt wasn't sure about how the plans were shaping up. The completed exterior of Mansion was previewed in 1965 on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color but did not actually open because now Walt's attention was on the New York World's Fair for which he was creating a few attractions. It wasn't until Walt's death in 1966 that the Mansion could actually get some attention. It finally opened in 1969!
This cover of Grim Grinning Ghosts is the version that is played in Club 33, an exclusive restaurant in New Orleans Square that is only indicated by a nondescript door with a simple 33 on it. It is not open to the public and the membership fees are in the thousands. But even if you have the money, don't expect to get in any time soon as the waiting is is apparently 14 years long!
All of the music that is heard in Club 33 has this similar chamber feel to it. I think this track is quite beautiful and eerie at the same time. I also have the Club 33 version of Feed the Birds but that is it. There are a dozen more songs that are heard in the club but a formal album has not been released. I don't even know where this track came from! I got it from another music blogger.
If anyone knows where I can get Club 33 music or who the performers are, I would be your best friend forever. UPDATE: Kevin hooked me up with this album! He is my new BFF! Thanks Kevin!
Day two of Disneyland Week brings us to an area of town that wasn't around when the park first opened in 1955. In fact the Country Bear Jamboree didn't even make it to Disneyland until 1972, a year after appearing in Walt Disney World in Florida.
The original idea for the Jamboree was that it would be a nice attraction for skiers at the ski resort that Walt was planning to build in the mid 60s. But legal issues and then Walt's death never saw the resort come to life. But the Imagineers kept the Jamboree alive and placed it in Frontierland in Walt Disney World in 1971.
The reaction was abundantly positive so the Imagineers immediately brought it to Disneyland and placed it in the area of the park known as Indian Village. That section of the park was renamed to Bear Country as it was the only attraction on that side of town. Bear Country was later renamed Critter Country in 1988 when Splash Mountain was added.
This wonderful ragtime medley comes from CHRIS CALABRESE'S Disneyland tribute album RAGTIME AT THE MAGICAL KINGDOMS. Country Bear Jamboree Medley is composed of five songs from the attraction:
Pianjo
Bear Band Serenade
Heart, We Did All That We Could
Blood on the Saddle
Come Again
Sadly, Country Bear Jamboree is no longer at Disneyland as they have replaced it with a Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride. Many fans were upset when this happened but I always remind myself that Walt's plans for this park were to have the attractions constantly changing so that the experience would be new every single time you went. Besides, it's still at Walt Disney World for you to enjoy.
This week at Covering the Mouse is Disneyland Week, celebrating 53 years since the beginning of the magic. The actual day isn't until Thursday but I'll be sharing with you some info about the park, the rides and the music leading up to that day.
Since Main Street is the first thing to greet you as you enter the park, I though it would be fitting to begin this week by greeting you the same way. This version of the Main Street Electrical Parade is covered by the Japanese group ECCENTRIC OPERA and was recorded in 1998 for yet another Japanese Disney cover album called WE LOVE MICKEY: HAPPY 70TH ANNIVERSARY. You will hear the Baroque Hoedown and Unbirthday Song as well as some samples from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The song's main theme is actually called the Baroque Hoedown and was written in 1967 by Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley who were composing music with their early version of a synthesizer. The song became an early electronic hit and it wasn't long before Disney would secure the rights for his Electrical Parade in 1972. In 1977 the song was re-written, covered if you please, by Don Dorsey and Jack Wagner (that's Jack's voice you hear at the beginning of the track) which is the version you still hear to this day. So this cover is actually a cover of a cover.
The Eccentric Opera is Naomi Sagara, a soprano who graduated from The Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and Nahoko Kakiage, who also graduated from the TNUFAM but in composition. Nahoko is the one behind keyboards, computers and sampling. Together these two girls arrange and record classical music in their unique style. I suppose that this Baroque-esque piece is very suiting for them to cover.
Main Street Electrical Parade Eccentric Opera 1998
For this month's installment of When You Wish Upon a Star Week, I've posted a cover of the classic Pinocchio tune by a classic guitarist.
CHET ATKINS, also known as Mr. Guitar, began his career as a musician of the string variety by playing ukulele, fiddle and then guitar, all before he was ten years old.
He grew up playing the guitar through the 30s and 40s and started performing in 1946 as part of Red Foley's country dance band. His guitar playing soon became very popular and he signed a deal with Steve Sholes of RCA Records to start recording records.
In 1957, Steve Sholes got a bit too busy producing and promoting an artist called Elvis Presley. Sholes couldn't keep up with the other branches of the label so Sholes put Atkins in charge of his Nashville branch. This was the beginning of Atkins' long career as a record producer. Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Dolly Parton are just a few of the names Atkins brought to the label.
It was around that time that Atkins started designing his own line of electric guitars with Gretsch. Atkins' guitars were the number one reason Gretsch could compete with the big names like Fender and Gibson. The Chet Atkins Country Gentleman was used by many musicians including Elvis Presley.
Atkins retired in the 70s after becoming dissatisfied with the way new executives ran RCA and the new ways his guitars were being made. He signed with Columbia and started making guitars with Gibson.
This beautiful cover of When You Wish Upon a Star is from PICKIN' MY WAY, an LP released by RCA in 1970. It is the perfect example of the awesome abilities Atkins possessed.
A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes - Kei Kobayashi
KEI KOBAYASHI has been surrounded by jazz his whole life. His dad, a jazz pianist, and his mom, a jazz vocalist, kept him constantly surrounded by the music they loved.
When he was sixteen he performed with Herbie Hancock in a benefit performance for victims of the Kobe earthquake. This was his big break. Soon after he released his indie album PS I Love You which sent Kobayashi into a bidding war between major labels!
He has now signed with Toshiba EMI and has released a few albums including JUST YOU in 2000 which includes a nice jazz cover of A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes.
A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes Kei Kobayashi 2000
Today is the 26th anniversary of the ground-breaking film Tron that was produced by Disney in 1982. The film was one of the first film to be released by a major studio that heavily relied on computer graphics. It has gone on to become a cult classic due to its computer game plot and CGI.
"In the year it was released," says director Lisberger, "the Motion Picture Academy refused to nominate Tron for special effects because they said we 'cheated' when we used computers which, in the light of what happened, is just mind-boggling."
The song I have chosen to post today is a remix of the Tron soundtrack. I'm not too familiar with the score to this film so I can't really give you specifics. Maybe one of you can? Leave a comments!
The track is by O.N.O., a Japanese DJ who likes to be simplistic yet powerful and sensitive. I think this track is a good example of that. I also think that this track is very fitting due to the heavy use of computers to do the remixing. Very apropos.
On July 8, 2007, the Tarzan Broadway Musical played it final performance at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York City. It had been running for just over a year.
The musical stared JOSH STRICKLAND (who you may remember from American Idol season two) as Tarzan and stuck pretty close to the Disney version.
Phil Collins, who wrote five songs for the Tarzan film, was asked to write nine more songs to fill out the story of this musical.
Today's cover is great, high-energy version of Trashin' the Camp from the Tarzan Broadway Musical and features the Ensemble singers with CHESTER GREGORY II in the lead as Terk. Gregory II was also cast as Donkey in the Shrek musical.
Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat/The Siamese Cat Song/The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room - On the Record Cast
It's been a few months since I posted a track from the On the Record Broadway Musical.
The main bulk of this song is Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat from the Aristocats but you will also hear a sample of the Siamese Cat Song from Lady and the Tramp as well as the Tiki Tiki Tiki Room from the Enchanted Tiki Room ride in Disneyland.
Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat/The Siamese Cat Song/The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room On the Record Cast 2005
An anonymous reader turned me on to this Spanish Disney cover album by MOCEDADES. He/she requested Some Day My Prince Will Come off this album and since this is Request Friday I am happy to oblige!
Mocedades formed in 1967 in Spain and recorded many hit songs throughout the 70s and 80s. Though their music was popular mainly to the Spanish-speaking world, Mocedades was able to reach the American market with their single Eres Tú in the early 70s. Eres Tú is one of the only Spanish language songs to reach the top 10 in the United States and has been coverd by dozens of artist including Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Petula Clark, Johnny Mathis and even a duet between Chris Farley and David Spade for the movie Tommy Boy.
In 1997, Mocedades released their 21st album, MOCEDADES CANTA A WALT DISNEY, a collection of Disney songs in their Spanish pop sound. The track I am sharing with you today is Some Day My Prince Will Come from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
If you know only a handful of important people in Disney history, GEORGE BRUNS should be one of them. And it is today that we are celebrating his birthday with a cover of a song he wrote with X. Atencio in 1967.
George Bruns was a proud member of the Walt Disney Company from the 50s through the 70s. He composed many well-known Disney songs (Ballad of Davy Crockett, Love, Yo Ho) and wrote many movie scores including the wonderful adaptation of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty for the film of the same name.
Not only trained in classical, Bruns was also an expert jazz player and played trombone in the Disney employee's band FIREHOUSE FIVE PLUS TWO.
Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life For Me) was written by Bruns with lyrics by Xavier Atencio in 1967 for the theme park ride. The song has become very popular, having recently been introduced to a new generation by being featured in the Pirates of the Carribean trilogy twenty years after Bruns' death!
This cover appears on DISNEYMANA 4 and is by the Disney pop/punk band JONAS BROTHERS. Due to the clean image of all Disney employees, the lyrics "Drink up me hearties" has been replaced with "Stand up me hearties."
Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life For Me) Jonas Brothers 2006
