Movie musical pieces

This will be a list of our personal favourite movie musical songs. This was hard to make, and we had to leave several of our favourites off to keep it succinct. Honourable mentions go to Grease, Prince of Egypt, Wizard of Oz , West Side Story and pretty much every other Disney animation.


1. Heaven's Light/Hellfire from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. You have to listen to these two together in order to experience the full impact. One of Menken's best and definitely the best villain song ever.

 


















2. Beauty & the Beast from Beauty & the Beast.  This is a shared place because we just couldn't make a decision. This is a classic and deservedly won an Oscar for best song.

 















2. Feed the Birds from Mary Poppins. We never saw this one until we were adults, so it doesn't really have any nostalgic value for us. However, the music is great, in particular this song. It's difficult to listen to this without welling up.

 















4. I Dreamed a Dream from Les Misérables. Say what you will of this adaptation, Anne Hathaway really knocked it out of the park in this one. We can't believe she's our favourite Fantine. This is one of the few scenes in the whole movie where the live-singing actually works. 

 















5. Johanna from Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  We don't much care for this rendition of the musical, but the original music is so great that even this version sounds good. The main actors aren't really up to the mark, but the minor characters have some pipes, which is why we chose this version of the song, and not the Quartet which we prefer from the musical.

 















6. I Wonder from Sleeping Beauty. It's Tchaikovsky. Do we need to give any further explanation?

 















7. Devant le Garage from Umbrellas of Cherbourg. This is a beautiful and bittersweet melody, just like the film itself. It's a classic.

 
 













8. My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music. We liked this song the best when we were kids. Today we really like all of them, but this holds a special place in our hearts.

 















9. Lies from Once. This is our only completely diegetic musical here. So, obviously the music is more pop than classic musical arrangement pieces. This would be our personal choice from the film.

10. Heaven On Their Minds from Jesus Christ Superstar. If it was the concept album, it'd obviously be Gethsemane and would be much higher. But since we absolutely wanted to have a song from this composition, we went with the best performance in the film.

 















11. City of Stars from La La Land. This is a really simple tune, but it's so damn effective. We wish we could like the movie as much as we love the soundtrack.

 














12. Jack's Lament from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The whole song is just sung so expressively that we can't help but love it.