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Composed, Conducted, Co-Produced, and Lyrics by:
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Randy Newman
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Co-Produced by:
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Frank Wolf
Don Davis
Jim Flamberg
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Release Date:
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June 21st, 1995
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Availability:
Regular U.S. release. A remastered album released with identical contents was released on March 27th, 2001.
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Awards:
Nominated for an Academy Award, 1995.
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you desire the songs from the film and can overlook the
inconsistencies of the slapstick underscore.
Avoid it... if Randy Newman's songs and scores seem childish and
repetitive to you no matter the context.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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Toy Story: (Randy Newman) When pouring endless amounts
of money into the development of the groundbreaking Toy Story
project, Disney and Pixar were unsure if the leap in computer animation
technology was going to be a success. Several years later, with little Woody
and Buzz toys all over the world and a sequel feature film all to
themselves, the Toy Story franchise has become a monumental success.
The film would be the launching pad for Pixar technology, with several
similarly constructed animation films to follow. For Disney, the established
core composer of their animated musicals at the time was Alan Menken, who
was concurrently writing for Pocahontas. Instead of choosing this
tested route, the studios handed the Toy Story scoring assignment
over to Randy Newman, who was already established as a composer who could
also bring a flair for happy, lazy songs to a project. While Menken could
have matched Newman's underscore (if not exceeded it in even its slapstick
quality), Menken didn't have the kind of jolly heart in his songs as Newman.
As a result, Randy Newman was asked to project his own personality onto the
score by composing a handful of songs which he would perform himself and,
thus, add the elements of heart and soul to the film. His voice would
represent the happy-go-lucky attitudes of the characters so well that he
would become the official Pixar composer for projects to come. Many of these
songs would be nominated for awards, and he would finally take home an
Academy Award for his title song for Monsters, Inc.. As a film,
Toy Story was an outstanding success in 1995, but as a stand-alone
score on album, Newman did not receive the same critical praise as
Pocahontas. His fortunes would change in subsequent years. Part of
this slower acceptence of Newman's scores, as opposed to his immediately
popular songs, is the unstable, slapstick nature of the underscore
material.
Regarding the underscore for Toy Story, the film's
highly gleeful and attention-deficient pace causes the orchestral material
to be difficult to grasp. Nobody argues against the effectiveness and
enjoyability of the songs, but the score suffers from the constant movement
of scene and action in the film. Thus, you end up with a highly irregular
collection of mini-cues strung together, often with nothing in common other
than their vigorous performances by the ensemble. Similar difficulties would
arise in Newman's later related scores, and namely A Bug's Life and
Monsters, Inc., but the Toy Story scores seem to have an
accute case of hyper-activity. It washes out when you attempt to determine
if here is any cohesive whole to the score. Aside from the problematic
nature of scoring for fast-paced animated action, Newman compounds the
problems by failing to adequately adapt his title theme into the score
itself. Other than a short swing section of the song's jazzy movement in the
ninth track, there is little to hear of the title song's theme throughout
the score. Also aiding the incoherent score are a few standout cues of
distinct personality. The pixar logo music is included at the start. A touch
of ELmer Bernstein is heard in the Western rhythm and theme for Woody in the
fourth cue. A short statement of the theme inspired by Apollo 13 (and
maybe even Poledouris' Wind) can be heard for Buzz at the end of the
seventh cue. The madness heard in the scenes with the mutant toys at Sid's
house is scored with particularly well-developed brass rhythms. The
militaristic motif provided for the toy soldiers in the fourteenth cue is
also well executed. But when you place these snippets of creativity in
between the mass of jumpy slapstick underscore, it's difficult to recall any
highlights from the score. The three songs at the beginning of the album
offer Newman's talents at their best, with all of them surpassing the
quality of the score by leaps and bounds. Fans of the movies will want the
crisply recorded songs, and rightfully so. The score becomes incidental and,
for much of its length, unnecessary. ***
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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• 1. You've Got a Friend in Me - performed by Randy Newman (2:04)
• 2. Strange Things - performed by Randy Newman (3:17)
• 3. I Will Go Sailing No More - performed by Randy Newman (2:57)
• 4. Andy's Birthday (5:58)
• 5. Soldier's Mission (1:28)
• 6. Presents (1:09)
• 7. Buzz (1:40)
• 8. Sid (1:20)
• 9. Woody and Buzz (4:29)
• 10. Mutants (6:05)
• 11. Woody's Gone (2:11)
• 12. The Big One (2:51)
• 13. Hang Together (6:02)
• 14. On the Move (6:18)
• 15. Infinity and Beyond (3:09)
• 16. You've Got a Friend in Me - performed by Randy Newman and Lyle Lovett (2:40)
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Insert includes lyrics, but has no extra information about the score or film.
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