Frozen Soundtrack, by Various Artists
Suggested by Peet Denny (Guilty Pleasure)
I don’t like Frozen.
There, I’ve said it.
Released in 2013, this animated musical has infiltrated everywhere, and everything. Up until, well, yesterday, every child of a certain age was bound by law to sing Let It Go, loudly, in a public place at least once a day, or be sentenced to Trial By Trebuchet. In the history of animation, there has never been such a saturation of all media that that achieved by Elsa, Ana and that insipid snowfreak Olaf. Well, not until the earth was devoured by the Minion Invasion of 2015.
You might suspect I’ve a grudge against the medium, but that’s not the case at all. I adore animation, and enjoy almost anything and everything I can. Pixar is my King, obviously, but there’s a host of other fabulous filmmakers out there that can cell-shade up a fury. So, no, it’s not the artform. It’s the product.
It’s a Disney Tale where love isn’t the Big Picture, where the bonds of sisterhood were the driving force behind the story arc. Apparently, the film broke new ground here, but honestly? They did it better in Lilo and Stich. Ohana means Family, remember? The animation itself? Again, it’s meant to be revolutionary, but, a few set pieces aside, there are whole scenes that feel unfinished, sparsely populated, and tired, not a patch on contemporary releases such as Tangled. And don’t get me started on that hideous asshat snowman… My god, I hate anthropomorphic sidekicks. Oh, to have ten minutes in a darkened room with Olaf and a bloody hairdryer.
But! This isn’t a critique of the movie, no matter how much I wish that to be the case. The songs are catchy, I’ll grant you that.
This soundtrack is a tale of two halves. The first half is the soundtrack proper, packed with the songs from the film in all their Disney glory. The second half is the score, which if I’m completely honest I could largely do without. It sounds a finely composed piece of work, and I can sense the timbre of the scenes over which each refrain would be played, but without the accompanying visuals it leaves me rather cold. Not Frozen, mind… just chilled.
As for the songs from the movie themselves, everyone knows what my standout track is. Hell, everyone can sing my standout track, word for word. Everyone’s mums, and kids, and aunts, and pets, and sofas can sing my standout track. For a time, it was literally the World’s Ringtone. (As an aside, it was so insidious that I part-wrote and recorded a Let It Go parody for one of my favourite games, Blood Bowl, that I was looking to release on a podcast that never happened… ah well, not all projects take flight as I’d like.)
The other songs are your standard Disney Musical fare, with Do You Want To Build A Snowman another highlight. I also enjoyed Fixer Upper, and of course I detested In Summer by that feckless piss-waffle Olaf. Poor Josh Gadd… so good in The Book of Mormon, so punchable in this. The only Snowman worth celebrating is the one that kidnapped Aled Jones in the Eighties.
I suspect that your stance on this soundtrack will mirror your stance on the film. If you’re miserable like me, or if you’re a parent that’s had this repeatedly bashed into your skull by your mewling offspring, it’s likely to cause a vein to throb or an eyelid to twitch. The Frozen Soundtrack gets 5/10 from me, with a full point awarded for the talents of Idina Menzel.