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•	1995 Album

•	2015 Album

•	1995 Album

As a film, Toy Story was an outstanding success in 1995, but as a stand-alone soundtrack on album, Newman did not receive the same critical praise that was afforded Menken for Pocahontas. Newman's fortunes would change in subsequent years, though. Part of this slower acceptance of Newman's scores, as opposed to his immediately popular songs, is the unstable, slapstick nature of the underscore material. The song creation process for Toy Story, although an immediate production success with "You've Got a Friend in Me" at the outset, was actually notable in the fact that Newman had songs that were, as he says, "gonged" from consideration for the final picture for being inappropriate, including a few unsuccessful takes on the main characters of Woody and Buzz. That issue didn't arise in subsequent Pixar films as Newman honed his skills in the genre. Regarding the score for Toy Story, the film's highly gleeful and attention-deficient pacing causes the orchestral material to be difficult to grasp. The original album for the film combined a slew of shorter cues into more palatable tracks, but in reality, Newman tackled this score as one would expect: 50 seconds at a time. It's a frantic combination of Carl Stalling music for Warner Brothers cartoons, vintage jazz, and even a touch of ragtime style. Nobody argues against the effectiveness and enjoyability of the songs, but the wandering score suffers from the constant movement of scene and action in the film. A few deviations into hard rock for the Buzz commercial and Pizza Planet sequences are notably abrasive diversions from the overarching innocence of most of the rest (excluding the Sid material, which strays into Danny Elfman territory). Each character set is provided with a somewhat consistent instrumental identity, even if Newman doesn't create outward melodies for them. The army figures, for instance, have their own martial element, and the mutant toy creations of Sid receive creepy waltz-like movements dominated by bassoons and tubas. Buzz's lofty aspirations typically unleash flutes on top of the ensemble for the concept of flight. Then, of course, there's the stereotypical Western rhythmic swing associated with Woody's antics. Thus, you end up with a highly irregular collection of extremely diverse mini-cues strung together, often with nothing in common other than their vigorous performances by the ensemble. There are some missed opportunities along the way, including no real instrumental identity for the little Martian men.

A frantic, skittish personality is not really surprising to hear in this score, and similar difficulties were destined to arise in Newman's later related scores, namely A Bug's Life and Monsters, Inc., but the Toy Story scores seem to suffer from an acute case of hyper-activity. It washes out when you attempt to determine if there is any cohesive whole to the score in a traditional sense of constructs and development. 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 "Woody and Buzz," there is little to hear of the main song's theme throughout the score. Aiding the otherwise incoherent score, however, are a few standout cues of distinct personality. The Pixar logo music is among the most vibrant and enjoyable single short pieces ever written by Newman, and it remains instantly recognizable many years later. Among other highlights, a touch of Elmer Bernstein is heard in the Western rhythm and theme for Woody in "Andy's Birthday." A short statement of theme inspired by Apollo 13 (and maybe even Basil Poledouris' Wind) can be heard for Buzz at the end of the track of his name. 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 "On the Move" is also well executed. But when you place these snippets of creativity in between the mass of jumpy, slapstick, and generic music, it's difficult to recall any highlights from the score. The three songs at the beginning of the original album (joined by the duet with Lyle Lovett at the end) offer Newman's talents at their best, all of them surpassing the quality of the score by leaps and bounds. It's clear in retrospect that "You've Got a Friend in Me" is truly a classic song in cinema history. Fans of the movies will want the crisply recorded songs, and rightfully so. The score becomes incidental and, for much of its length, unnecessary. That said, Disney did include Toy Story as one of their "Legacy Collection" CD offerings in the 2010's, this one released in 2015 and featuring the full score and the demo song recordings that were rejected from the film. While the score's full presentation is massively faithful and completes a better narrative, it is difficult to swallow without simply watching the film. It's a case in which the shorter, combined arrangement is superior. The demo songs, while intriguing in hearing how they informed the score, are not substantive. Ultimately, it remains a lovable soundtrack best served by its shorter album.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Randy Newman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15 (in 20 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.1 (in 22,920 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.