Continued Explorations - Music and the Fictive Dream 2, the Return of Shrek

    

    Everyone knows or at least has heard of or seen Shrek, either as a meme or from the original movies. Well, I'm kicking a dead horse here, and please don't do that because that isn't very nice, with bringing back the meme icon: Shrek. 

Our story begins on a bright sunny day in 1990, William Steig writes a book simply titled: Shrek!

William Steig, a previous cartoonist from The New Yorker had only just started writing children's books, one of these books was Shrek! Which follows the story of Shrek, a hideous being that was just kicked out of his parent's swamp. Shrek encounters a witch that reads his fortune after a trade of Shrek's lice, and the witch told him about how he (Shrek) would be brought to a castle by a donkey, fight a knight, and marry a princess. 

The movie started coming together when Steven Spielberg bought the rights to the story (haven't found any information for how much). Spielberg had initially planned to have the movie done in the traditional way of animating, until John H. Williams convinced him to bring the idea to Dreamworks Studios. The two have known each other since Steven went to John to compose music for his movie Sugarland Express and for Jaws (Weinberg). They started production on the movie in 1995, and unfortunately due to the main voice actor's death in 1997 (their name is Chris Farley by the way), a new lead voice actor needed to be chosen, and their name is Mike Myers. Due to this being the early age of the internet, and almost 24 years ago, I have not been able to find any initial reactions of when Mike Myers decided to give Shrek a Scottish accent. The Dreamworks movie follows the original book's story, somewhat. There is a donkey, a castle, but Shrek ends up being the knight and going to save the princess. The original movie seems slightly dated with its jokes, but it still has had a major impact in modern internet culture today.

One of the parts that everyone should know is the beginning of Shrek, the dreaded outhouse scene where we first get a glimpse at Shrek. This is where the first song comes in, Smash Mouth's All Star Smash Mouth - All Star - YouTube. A couple of years ago, everyone has heard of this dreaded song, I say dreaded because of how it's been tied to Shrek in internet culture. Heck, even Smash Mouth decided to make a song that's dedicated to them being the "Shrek band", which of course is Believer. But besides that, All Star being the first blaring song that starts as soon as the movie begins the plot has cemented it as the "Shrek Song".

Smash Mouth's All Star had a shakey start up, with the band losing their lead songwriter after the band's first hit Walkin' On The Sun, with the songwriter leaving due to the sudden change from the Band's original genre of music to pop music (Kevin Coleman also wrote Walkin' On The Sun before even joining the band). Greg Camp, the band's guitarist, was promoted to lead songwriter and sat down with the band's manager to dissect what made song's on the top 50 music hits great, and they worked until they've managed to come up with two songs: Then the Morning Comes and All Star. All Star ended up being a popular song, with the lead song writer licensing out the song to be played anywhere. On how the song got into Shrek? Vicki Jenson was leading the movie and wanted most of the aspects of the movie to be different from other animated movies, and that especially came down to the soundtrack. Jenson contacted Smash Mouth to license All Star for the movie, and they initially turned down the offer. But after a private screening of the movie, the band saw potential for the movie and OK'd the licensing (Healy). 

The song part in the movie as well as the scene just before the introduction with the song, is supposed to give the clear sense that this movie isn't supposed to be an average fairytale movie. Popular music in animated movies are support the movie moments as well support the plot of what's happening in the movie. Shrek and All Star breaks this mold, with the only similarities between the song and the plot, is that Shrek is the main character, the All Star of the movie. What Shrek does during the introduction doesn't correlate with the song moments other than what I've said previously.

The next song I'm going to be talking about is one that I'm sure you've already heard before John Cale's version of and emotional hit, Hallelujah. Here's the song if you want to listen while you read: John Cale - Hallelujah (Lyrics) (best version) - YouTube. The song has been through a lot of iterations throughout the years since it was made, but it was written and sung by Leonard Cohen in 1984. The history behind Hallelujah is a little complex, in a way. The song clearly is about Love and Loss, but Cohen uses imagery and inspiration from the bible to turn the word "Hallelujah" from the original biblical use meaning something along the lines of "God be praised" into what we'd use today for celebrating something, regretting something, remembrance for something/someone, and to forgive (Parks). Cohen was a poet, often writing songs and giving them his poetic expertise, and like most of the world's poetry, it could be interpreted many different ways so your interpretation could be different from mine. The inspiration for John Cale to do his take of the song is when he attended one of Cohen's performances, and the song stuck with him for a long time; and this is what drove him to make his version of the song (Parks). His song has longer notes, making the song seem a lot more saddening or meaningful, giving the feeling of loss or regret. 

The part it plays in the movie is when Shrek loses Fiona, who has left to Farquaad's castle during the night. Shrek then expresses his emotions in the form of anger, lashing out at Donkey and driving him away. The song begins to play when Shrek returns back to his home in the swamp, which is wrecked from previous events. The song continues to play with minimal audio from the characters, as the song plays it show's the three main characters, Shrek returning back to his lonely life in the swamp after his life's been changed. Donkey wandering the forest after his only friend pushed him away. And Fiona, who's showing signs of her not wanting to be where she is in the castle. The imagery as the song plays shows that they're missing something, feeling as if they lost something. During the beginning of the scene, Shrek steps on a broken pane of glass and looks into it, the scene changes and Shrek fades away as it transitions to crystals in the castle that's showing Fiona. Another part giving this example clearly is when Shrek is at home at his table, and as the camera pans, Fiona begins to fade into the seat across from Shrek and shows Fiona eating in the castle, alone. As if these moments, when they separated, they shattered apart and missing each other. The version of the song done by John Cale fits into this scene because they're all missing each other, lost each other.

The first few times I watched this movie, I didn't care much for the music (until the sequel with I Need A Hero). Doing more research of the songs, I found out more than I expected. The whole time I had no idea who actually made Hallelujah or that it was sung by a different person in the movie. When I first started writing this, I intended to fill the words with Shrek inspired humor, but when I sat there writing the history of Hallelujah, I got serious about it. Overall, Hallelujah is a good song, and All Star will always be the funny Shrek meme song.

  

Healy, Ryan. “'All Star': The Story behind Smash Mouth's Hit Song: Udiscover.” UDiscover Music, 4 May 2021, https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/smash-mouth-all-star-song-history/.

Parks, Kyson. “The Meaning and History of the Song ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen.” Spinditty, Spinditty, 4 Feb. 2013, https://spinditty.com/genres/The-Origin-and-History-of-the-Song-Hallelujah.

Stobodzian, Jillian, et al. “12 Most Shrek Songs from 'Shrek'.” The Odyssey Online, 17 Oct. 2019, https://www.theodysseyonline.com/shrek-songs-from-shrek#:~:text=%2012%20Most%20Shrek%20Songs%20From%20%27Shrek%27%20,but%20it%27s%20a%20Shrek%20song.%20%20More%20.

Weinberg, Rob. “John Williams and Steven Spielberg.” Classic FM, 22 Oct. 2018, https://www.classicfm.com/composers/williams/guides/facts-williams/spielberg/.