Empire's Top 10 Cartoon Songs

Those lovely people at Empire have blogged on their favourite songs from cartoons. You can read it here:

http://www.empireonline.com/features/top10/cartoon-songs/10.asp

So it got me thinking why do so many cartoons have songs in them? Actually, scrap that. Why did they? I can't think of many modern animated films that have songs in them (they do, but tend to use pop songs already familiar to the audience. Often this is to add atmosphere to a scene; more romantic, more exciting etc).

The last one I can think of is Toy Story 2 and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=natWIzL4gLg

Having checked this link you are now no doubt in floods of tears (admit it!) and so need cheering up. What better than The Jungle Book, probably the best of all Disney's movies in terms of songs (King of the Swingers!!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOcyYyxqN_g

So why WERE songs so common in these films? It probably has something to do with the fact that when animated feature films began (with Snow White in 1937) one of the most popular genres of films was the musical. And so, naturally, cartoons followed suit. Ironically the cartoon and its songs outlasted the musical, so much so that by the 1990s and films like The Lion King, cartoons were almost the only films that had songs woven into them.

The other reason may be that an associated album of original songs might be one of the few ways that the audience could own a part of the film (this is before DVD remember, even before VHS!).

Whatever the reason you should be aware that for a large part of their history songs have been important LANGUAGE FEATURE of animated films.