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. While Brubeck keeps the time signature in 4/4 as per the original, he give the melody more of a triplet feel. The Evans version adapts this feel to 6/8, which has become a well recognized way of playing the song by jazz musicians over the years.
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.
