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The prevalent mixing issues with the songs causes continued problems with "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," which is diminished from its once triumphant place atop this soundtrack. The alluring background vocals are barely audible over the voices of Beyoncé and Donald Glover, the former simply too polished to fit in this role. She performs here as though she's belting out an album and not recording as a female lion tentative about the encounter in the scene. The same can be said of her new single for the film, "Spirit," which just doesn't fit on screen at all. What on earth was Zimmer thinking when he advocated that this song move out of the end credits and into the narrative? Did he not realize it doesn't jive with the demeanor of John's songs at all? Again, process over product. The reprise of "The Circle of Life" assumes its proper place at the end of the film, appended to Zimmer's kingdom fanfare as before, and aside from the lack of Lebo M. in the actual reprise, it's fine. The new John song, "Never Too Late," is a better match for the soundtrack than "Spirit," but even he is a bit too exuberant in tone for this narrative. The Mancina and Rifkin holdover, "He Live in You," is performed well by Lebo M. and is the highlight of the "new" material included with the remake. His voice has taken the place of John's as the musical representation of this concept, and it's good to hear him provide this song here. His humorous reprise of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (performed in source form by characters earlier in the soundtrack), titled natively as "Mbube," is a fun way to end the credits, though a piece of Zimmer's score would have been appreciated as well. Sadly, that underscore by Zimmer suffers from some of the same lack of joy and magic exhibited in the songs. Let's face it, the Zimmer of 2019 is not the Zimmer of 1994. The man's music in 1994 was overflowing with lyrical, warm personality, often with panpipes and other counterintuitive but nevertheless effective instrumentation. In many ways, 1994's The Lion King represented a tearful goodbye to the early Zimmer days, his knack for conjuring innocent and affable melodies replaced by his masculine power anthem mode in years to come. Perhaps more importantly, the man has become consumed with the collaborative production of music rather than smart, intuitive choices about the spotting and composition of music for the story, and many of the rearrangements of his work for the 2019 The Lion King are tactical failures that could have been prevented with some gut instincts from 1994 Zimmer. The overall result is still fine, and it even excels at times, but the new score still leaves you with nagging discomfort at times.

Zimmer collectors expecting to hear all of the original 1994 score's themes will be largely pleased that the composer brings back his two main themes for the film. But marginalized in 2019's The Lion King are three of his important subthemes, and his instrumentation now favors his heavy-handed melodramatic sensibilities that chase away the charm of his original recording. Woodwind performer extraordinaire Richard Harvey returns, thankfully, but with the panpipes somewhat sidelined outside of a cameo in "Life's Not Fair." One must theorize that Zimmer considered the panpipes, ever-present in his early scores, to be one of the things he needed to change about the score, because they are often replaced here by occasional flute and recorder solos that are just as pretty but not as authentic to the original score. Yes, the recorder in the interlude of "The Circle of Life" and the flute in the ascension theme are still present, and that will satisfy some listeners, but the lack of additional woodwind diversity does leave you wanting. Conversely, the weight of the strings and brass is increased, lending more depth to the quasi-religious aspect of the score. Several cues, including "Scar Takes the Throne," really push the melodrama up several notches, and it counterintuitively diminishes the emotional scope of the score. With more emphasis on the orchestration of drama in these cues, there's less room to breathe adventure and fun into the equation. Of course, Zimmer employed fifteen orchestrators (15! They're reproducing!) for this recording, so it's no wonder the essence of Pride Rock got lost somewhere. The main theme of the score is Zimmer's ascension theme, representing Simba and sharing a closing phrase with John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" melody, and while it doesn't make as much of an impact in the remake as Mufasa's kingdom theme, it does receive some really lovely performances. The idea shines in the latter half of "Rafiki's Fireflies," the middle and end of "Simba is Alive!," and with reverence in "Reflections of Mufasa." The Mufasa kingdom theme is the religious powerhouse of the score, featured in "Scar Takes the Throne" and "Reflections of Mufasa," among others, and Zimmer overplays this theme during conversational scenes between Mufasa and Simba this time around. One of the loveliest and most effective cues in the 1994 score is "We Are All Connected," and there's simply no equivalent here. The panpipes of that fantastic cue are gone in the equivalent replacements as well. The merging of these two themes in "King of Pride Rock" at the end is arguably an improvement, as this is one place where Zimmer's increased melodramatic weight really works.

The diminishment of three supporting themes in Zimmer's score for 2019's The Lion King is truly unfortunate. The nasty saxophone and bassoon theme for Scar is limited this time, heard mostly in "Life's Not Fair" and not seemingly performed in full. The kingdom fanfare playfully previewed in the middle of "We Are All Connected" has been totally replaced by a more generic, ethnically heavy sequence in "Reflections of Mufasa," leaving the fanfare in full for only the closing moments of the film. The family theme that doubles for romance is marginalized as well. The action and suspense music in the remake is about as expected, more finely orchestrated and leaving the days of Black Rain further behind. Some of the more childish, drum and cymbal-happy portions of "Battle for Pride Rock" are a bit obnoxious. Another complicating issue with this score is the fact that the 1994 recording still hasn't experienced a truly satisfying album release, even with the 2014 "Legacy" edition from Disney. There remains a slew of lovely recordings for 1994's The Lion King missing from collections, and there was some hope that the 2019 album release would relieve some of that pressure. But despite the remake being 30 minutes longer in length, there's still only 44 minutes of score on the one and only soundtrack album for the remake. That product is presented largely in chronological order with the events of the film, songs and score mingling, and that's a great choice. And, ironically, the overwrought production values of the score and similar efforts behind the songs have brought them into better alignment in terms of the album's flow. The two new songs from Beyoncé and John really break the album's narrative, however, with their discordant styles. Overall, film score collectors will want to bypass the songs on this remake and take snippets of the re-arranged score to add to their 1994 The Lion King favorites. For all the hype and hysteria about Zimmer's recording of the score in a "live" manner, entire cues done in one take, the end product doesn't really sound any more revolutionary. You can't tell the difference what recording process was applied or what ensemble was used. In the end, the music is simply okay no matter all that fuss, and there's something quite disappointing about that. After all that effort, Zimmer didn't ruin his score, but he didn't improve upon it, either. If you want to hear this music with all the heart, joy, and glory of its best potential, do yourself this favor: bypass the 2019 soundtrack and appreciate the video of the aforementioned Lebo M. performance of "The Circle of Life" at the 2014 HAVASI Symphonic concert in Budapest. That performance is the benchmark by which this remake soundtrack fails.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.93 (in 98 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.95 (in 276,510 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

Total Time: 77:32