The name Alan Menken has come to be closely associated with the very best in Broadway music, as well as Academy Award®-winning songs and scores for Disney animated films including such modern standards as “Under the Sea,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “AWhole New World,” and “Colors of the Wind.” One genre he has not tackled before is the western. The renowned composer/songwriter set out to demonstrate the full range of his musical talents with the songs and score for “Home on the Range.” Working with lyricist Glenn Slater, a major new talent, Menken proved that he was very at home with this genre too.
“‘Home on the Range’ is a hybrid kind of musical,” notes Menken. “Two of the songs are sung by characters in the film and the rest are under the action. This was quite different from the musicals I have written in the past, where the characters break into song. As a musical theatre writer, my job is to create a stylistic language for telling the story. With this film, the language and the intent were quite different from things I’ve done in the past. It was fun and challenging at the same time.
“The main thing I want is to provide an audience in a song something to take away with them,” he continues. “So that after they’ve heard that song, it’s alive to them. That, to me, is the most important aspect of songwriting. It should be evocative and memorable. And it should be something that, once sombody’s heard it, belongs to them for the rest of their lives.”
Slater explains, “To capture the tone we were looking for, I did huge amounts of research before starting in on the lyrics for this film. I read dozens of westerns, like Little Big Man, The Virginian, and Lonesome Dove. And I watched dozens of western films. I actually kept a notebook and would jot down any phrase or chunk of language that seemed like it had good juice to it. I filled an entire book with evocative phrases and details of what you might find out West. Anything that could be remotely useful.”
For the title song, “(You Ain’t) Home on the Range,” the songwriters had the challenge of dealing with another song with a similar title that is known to just about anyone over the age of three. They decided to take their song in quite the opposite direction of the song that we all grew up knowing.
Slater explains, “With our opening song, we wanted to establish a connection with all of the western films that everyone knows and to create that big sense of open plains, vast deserts, and rollicking cowboys. We wanted to get all that imagery in one place and let the audience know that this is the world they’re about to enter. We also wanted to signal to them that this was not a serious drama about western myth-making. This is very definitely a comedy. The trick was to create a western sound with a tough cowboy chorus, but to poke a little fun at that style of music and let the audience know they’re in for some laughs.”
Menken adds, “This song has kind of a hoedown feel. Aaron Copland was one of my big influences in writing it. It’s a really energetic, foot-stomping song that is a bit sophisticated in its musical style and humor. It is quintessentially old western in its basic feel.”
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