Search - Various Artists - Soundtracks :: Emperor's New Groove (2000 Film) (Blisterpack)

Disney's score-heavy soundtrack to the animated "Emperor's New Groove" blends a scoop of splashy and sentimental contemporary tunes with a shovelful of evocative, masterfully crafted compositions. Big-name artists such as Shawn Colvin, Eartha Kitt, and Tom Jones each signed on to sing one of five Sting-penned songs, and Sting himself lends vocals to two tracks (one a duet with Colvin), so the stars are flying high. But fans of these folks may feel they're forever flipping through the wordless orchestral numbers in search of the record's radio-friendly fare. But buyers with more eclectic listening habits are in for a fully engaging if sometimes jumpy sonic ride: Composer John Debney sends pulses racing then mellows them out on tracks teeming with tension ("Beware the Groove"), trepidation ("The Jungle Rescue"), or tenderness ("A New Hope"), and Sting as songwriter doses up splashes of spice by way of the salsified "Perfect World," for which Jones's considerable vocal energies couldn't be better suited, and the prickly "Snuff Out the Lights," which is put across with practiced insouciance by a pucker-faced, still-out-of-this-world-after-all-these-years Kitt, who also plays the movie's devious diva Yzma. "My Funny Friend and Me," Emperor's end-title song and the record's first single, presents a more familiar Sting, and not only because he's its singer. Soundwise, it hardly strays from the artist's huge-selling adult-skewed ballads--his bread and butter in recent years--and as such, it, along with the tender duet "One Day She'll Love Me," grips the potential to send this record racing up the charts. --Tammy La Gorce