Walt Disney Records The Legacy Collection: The Lion King

In 1994, The Lion King served as one of Disney's crowning achievements. Based on Shakespeare's Hamlet and some Bible stories, the movie enjoys a degree of timelessness perfectly capturing the spirit of the late-1980s and early-1990s Disney animated musical era films.One of the key aspects of the movie was its soundtrack. Instant hits like Can You Feel the Love Tonight, I Just Can't Wait to Be King, and Hakuna Matata became touchstones of Disney's music library practically overnight. However, it was Hans Zimmer's score that gave the film its direction when the singing stopped and the drama and comedy emerged. The sweeping, memorable orchestral music incorporates necessary musical stylings to capture the African safari feeling while simultaneously giving the grandiose qualities attendant to the story of a king. The tragedy of the original release is that a great amount of music from the score has heretofore remained unavailable. Until now.This is the definitive collection of music. The quality is outstanding, and listening to the soundtrack in all its glory, a listener can hear certain instruments that got muted or muffled when the music volume was balanced against the sound effects and voiceover in the film. Hans Zimmer is a modern day master of film scores, and this music is a shining example of his use of themes and musical styles to effectively communicate to the listener what is going on in the movie. To the best of my knowledge, this is the complete soundtrack to the movie. All of the tracks are in the correct order, including placing the vocal tracks at their proper place with reference to the score pieces.Additional musical features are a few extra songs and demo tracks, essentially early recordings of some of the film's music. They are not *too* different from the tracks used in the film, but there is a sufficient distinction to justify their inclusion on the CDs.The liner notes and packaging are excellent, going for a book theme rather than a standard jewel case. While as a matter of personal preference I would rather have the jewel case for purposes of protecting the discs, the materials are all high quality and there are some interesting notes included in here. The artwork is beautiful and as a long-time Disney fan, and especially an adult collector, this is an excellent addition to my collection.While it is a shame that it took 20 years to get the complete Hans Zimmer score formally released, the music was well worth the wait. As I indicated above, this is the definitive soundtrack to the movie, and the extras make it worth the purchase price. For fans of Zimmer's music and fans of The Lion King, I recommend this collection extremely highly and I strongly advise fans to keep a look out for future Disney Legacy Collection soundtracks over the course of the next year. If you're only interested in the vocal tracks like Hakuna Matata, the individual songs can be purchased elsewhere, including the old 1994 soundtrack. This is a set for more serious collectors and for those looking for the complete orchestrated score for the movie. If you fall into the latter category, this is what you're seeking.EDIT: I have two additional items of note for this soundtrack after listening to it a couple of times which may be relevant. First, the vocal tracks with which everyone is familiar (e.g. Circle of Life, Hakuna Matata, etc.) are the film mixes, not the "single" releases of these songs. This means that these tracks differ from every previous release of the same songs in that there is bleed-in from prior tracks because the movie more or less had wall-to-wall music, with a few exceptions. The tracks have gapless playback wherever appropriate. They are also slightly remixed, including mildly different instrumentation arrangements. In other words, while the songs are the same as you know and love, because the concept of this release is to include all the music, some of the instruments are brought to the foreground of the soundscape compared to prior releases. Often this is quite subtle and most are not likely to notice it, but if you are familiar with the original CD release, there most certainly is a difference.Second, as another reviewer pointed out, some of the tracks are a tad bit too loud in their mix which causes distortion. I experimented a little with this and my results varied. Ripping the CD to my iPod proved the best way to listen to it, probably because the rip balanced it. Listening to the CD straight through a CD player led to results which varied based primarily on speaker size and quality. My 5-speaker surround setup balanced it--probably automatically--but a straight stereo speaker setup had a little bit of distortion. It's a strange situation because it is not really a huge problem and some buyers may not even experience it. The demo tracks on the second disc were more susceptible to this, but that is to be expected because they were not included in the film's final mix. All the same, in the interest of thoroughness, I wanted to update my review to point this out in case anyone else notices it. Thanks to the reviewer who pointed it out in that review so I knew it wasn't just me noticing it!

I found some other reviews super helpful, so I'm just adding my voice to the group here, not adding much real new information.This is the copy of The Lion King soundtrack you want. I can imagine exactly one reason anyone would be disappointed with this, and it's a very minor reason to me. In every other way, this is a complete and representative version of a soundtrack whose previous albums, in my opinion, were decidedly lacking. By contrast, this album feels like a real soundtrack. With the missing pieces filled in, you can follow the musical themes in the score all the way through the specific points of the movie.A brief soapbox so you'll understand what I was looking for in this soundtrack: I'm so happy with the idea of the Legacy Collection in general. Disney animation as a "brand" has long been at the point where people appreciate it at the highest, most representative quality possible, and the technology is at the point where it makes sense to oblige. That is to say, soundtracks aren't on cassette tape or LP anymore and it's not just eight-year-olds listening, so there's no reason anymore to put all the songs up-front or omit parts of the score. (Although if you enjoyed the original soundtrack version and are worried about losing the Elton John versions of the songs, they're on the second disc.)Other reviewers dove into the specifics of how parts were kind of remixed compared to earlier versions, and what might have been lost or gained, so check those out, because that's the only reason I can imagine being disappointed with this. For instance, there are some tracks that kind of bleed over into one another (as they do in most movies), so it's possible you may want to keep your old copy of the soundtrack if you like the way certain tracks stand alone for things like shuffling, or if you notice the subtle differences in what instruments and backing vocals are more prominent. As far as sound quality, I got the soundtrack on CD, and although I'm not the audiophile or connoisseur that others are, I do enjoy listening on "high end-ish" noise-cancelling headphones. For my money, it had all the clarity and subtlety I expect in a top-notch album.As I understand it, the Mary Poppins and Sleeping Beauty Legacy Collections releases are very similar to previous versions of those soundtracks, with different supplemental features. (Don't quote me on that, it's just the general feeling I got from reading). But this is a very complete version of the soundtrack from, and a major major improvement on, anything previous. It's a lot more like the special double-disc collection of Frozen they had, with so many more score tracks on the second disc, with the added difference here that they went ahead and put the tracks in movie order.