Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm.
Of my Disney material, 'Tangled' is my most pop-oriented.
Howard Ashman was an amazing lyricist and an amazing artist.
TV is a medium where I've been an outsider for the most part.
I'm not interested in being the producer of somebody else's song.
I see my songs and shows almost like a mosaic - part of a bigger picture.
I always felt great about what I wrote for 'Newsies,' but 'Newsies' was a total flop.
A lot of what I've done has a rock edge, even going back to 'Little Shop of Horrors.'
I'm a very style-driven composer, and I like to give every project its own unique stamp.
My first success was 'Little Shop of Horrors,' and I had been working for years on jingles.
I was always proud of the score to 'Newsies.' The movie is good, but it was under-budgeted.
There's such a rich trove of unheard Howard Ashman lyrics that we're so blessed to draw from.
Most of my collaborations, certainly post - Howard Ashman but even with Howard, are music first.
I have a team who I respect immensely, so if they have opinions, I'm interested in hearing them.
I'm very proud of 'Will the Sun Ever Shine Again.' That was a song written very close to the 9/11 event.
For a brief period, I had a gentleman's farm in Pennsylvania, but even then, I kept a place in New York.
The job, when you write film underscore, is to be ignored. That comes with the gig, no question about it.
The act of writing a song involves a degree of letting go of yourself, and that's very much being a child.
Collaboration is being open to each other's ideas and benefiting from each other's perspectives in an open way.
A lot of the projects I've been involved with have been my babies, and I'm not going to give my baby to anyone else.
When Peter Schneider first approached me about adapting 'Sister Act' for the stage, it wasn't a slam dunk to say yes.
I always wanted to have a villain song for Hades in 'Hercules,' but I couldn't figure out how we would have Hades sing.
I have lots of personal feelings of my own, but at this stage in my life and career, I'm very much driven by assignment.
I have an awards cabinet in my studio where I keep my eight Oscars, my 11 Grammys, my seven Golden Globes, and my Tony Award.
I've said, for a long time, my favorite part of my career is when I'm creating a new thing where I'm pulling from a new place.
The best parts about writing a show are [its] first, second and 10th anniversaries. Everything else is relative levels of hell.
Having a tradition is a great thing to work within, and maybe today [it] is the only way to really land musically dramatic work.
I'm not intimidated by embracing a familiar form and what's familiar about it and making it my own. It is, I think, one of my gifts.
A villain number is a very valuable thing to have, but if you look at most musicals, one way or another there's an antagonist number.
I have the ability to clear the decks and focus on what's happening in the moment. And I get to spend my life doing what I love to do.
I've been very fortunate as a composer to be involved with projects that have really propelled my scores forward. I'm very proud of it.
I always wanted to be a composer, and I sort of went in to NYU as pre-med because I just thought, 'Well... who actually becomes a composer?'
I can't get into the underlying psyche of someone like Robin Williams, but he was at that level of fame where he was somewhat self-protective.
I don't write songs for myself anymore. I only write songs on assignment. It's purely a business, but it is still so important to me emotionally.
If you write enough musicals you pretty much have a sense of where they should go, what you'll need, and when; how to pull people on that journey.
Often my best work comes from somebody trying to stretch me in a direction that I wouldn't normally want to go in. It's not something I fight at all.
I work in a dramatic context, meaning we write with a lot of character specifics, a lot of story specifics. There's a lot of architecture in our songs.
Most things that I write are in very specific forms. A score will have a shape and profile, and then the more emotional and intimate moments will come.
Most successful musicals need to attach themselves to something bigger than themselves, a concept that will make people feel immediately connected to it.
I love 'The Gospel Truth,' the song that opened up 'Hercules.' I thought that song was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed producing that and writing that.
Music is a gestalt. Songs are a life force and they have specific vocabulary to them. You hear a few notes, and they take you into a world of association.
The things I tend to do best are the things that are the most overtly emotional, whether it's sentimental or whether it's celebratory or whether it's conflicted.
I've always juggled a lot of projects because at least half the projects you do get shelved. So you have to do a lot of things in order for things to move forward.
Live-action films are very much a director's medium, and that director is going to be a very strong voice, a stronger individual voice than you'd have in animation.
Movies, there are moments when you're writing a song or demoing, a moment in the recording studio. Musicals much more just eat up your life for a certain period of time.
When I first started working at Disney animation, I can't tell you how many people said to me, 'Oh, man, take a powder.' Nobody takes animated musicals seriously. I swear.
As a kid, I loved classical music. Composers like Beethoven were like rock stars to me. Then there were the real rock stars: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan.
Truth be told, of course, what I enjoy most is reinventing myself and doing new projects where I work in new genres, or I get to find what the voice of a particular musical is.
When I was younger, I'd get very invested in things. It's a hard lesson to learn, but you have to know that if you want to find gold, you've got to love the process of digging.
Composing easy? I find it easy if - big if - the idea is right, if I have the right collaborator, and if my collaborator is in the room. I like my collaborator to be in the room.