Published on Feb 11, 2002
On the surface, Michael Crawford seems to be the obvious choice
to cover a collection of classic songs from the Walt Disney
library. After all, Crawford is the voice who gave life to the
title character in
The Phantom Of The Opera.
On paper, it seems like a match made in heaven. So why does
The Disney Album, the result of this collaboration, sound
like Walt Disney meets the “lite-FM”?
Two reasons stand out in my mind. First, Crawford may have a
beautiful voice for theater (more on that in just a moment), but on
many of these tracks, it almost sounds like he’s giving a rote
performance. He almost speaks his way through songs like “Colors Of
The Wind”; on others like “You’ll Be In My Heart,” he almost sounds
like a lounge singer. And I’m sorry, but nobody – let me repeat
that,
nobody
– should be allowed to sing “When She Loved Me” other than
Sarah McLachlan.
That kind of leads to the second reason why
The Disney Album doesn’t work. Crawford has extremely big
shoes to fill – and seeing that Crawford selected almost entirely a
lineup of recent songs from the Disney catalog, he’s fighting
people’s memories of these selections. I don’t know about you,
gentle reader – whoops, went into a “Miss Manners” trance there –
but I still remember performances from such artists as Kenny
Loggins, Vanessa Williams and Phil Collins. Crawford’s heart may
have been in the right place when he chose these songs, but he
doesn’t do the original singers any service.
The two lone highlights on
The Disney Album, not surprisingly, are songs that are
unfamiliar to the pop world. Crawford’s take on “Baby Mine” from
Dumbo is absolutely heart-rendering – of course, being a new
father again, I admit there may be an additional emotional yank on
my heartstrings each time I hear this song. The other great track
is “I Know The Truth,” from the Broadway show
Aida. Crawford’s true strength is in material written for
the big stage, and he proves it on this selection.
Crawford’s talents and successes are well known, but
The Disney Album has too many phantoms of the original
artists to allow Crawford any chance of making the material his
own. That, plus a pretty standard performance from Crawford, makes
this disc a major disappointment.