JUKEBOX: “The Trail We Blaze” by Elton John

Miguel and Tulio reading the map to lead them to the City of Gold

Hi everybody! It’s Kimberly here for my seventeenth post for the genre “Children’s Music.”

When DreamWorks SKG was originally founded in 1994, it was mainly in competition with the classic hand-drawn animation of Disney. After the advent of computer generated animation, DreamWorks has been mainly competing with Pixar. For instance, in1998 DreamWorks Antz came out a little over a month before Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, which was also centered on a colony of talking ants. The public ended up favoring A Bug’s Life over Antz. Now in 2014, one could argue that DreamWorks is currently doing better than Pixar. In recent years DreamWorks has come out with hit movies, such as Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon, whereas this is only the second year since 1995 that Pixar isn’t releasing a movie. In honor of DreamWorks and the opening day of How to Train Your Dragon 2 I decided to review “The Trail We Blaze” from one of my favorite hand-drawn/computer-animated movies The Road to El Dorado.

As far as the music goes in The Road to El Dorado, it’s almost like the DreamWorks version of the music from The Lion King. I say this because Hans Zimmer wrote music for both movies and Elton John performed and wrote songs for both movies. Hans Zimmer is mainly a score composer for films. One could hear his work in movies, such as The Prince of Egypt and Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.). Elton John is more known as a pop singer with songs like Crocodile Rock and Rocket Man. The combination of these two artists makes the journey that the main characters in the movie endeavor upon that much more exciting.

The Road to El Dorado is mainly about two friends, Miguel and Tulio, who seek the City of Gold to capitalize on all of its riches. “The Trail We Blaze” is an upbeat song that has a nice, steady rhythm that fits the epitome of a road trip. The percussion and string instruments heard in the song keep the song upbeat, whilst maintaining a sound that reminds the listener and viewer that the movie is taking place in Latin America. The addition of a harmonizing voice makes the song even more interesting. In addition to the melody, the listener gets the impression that the lyrics were well-thought out to fit the movie’s plot. I especially like the lyric, “Changing legend into fact/We shall ride into history.” Elton John’s voice fits “The Trail We Blaze” perfectly. I’m giving “The Trail We Blaze” 4 records because it’s enjoyable rhythm and lyrics are fun, but they do not leave the same impact as the songs from The Lion King.

I hope you enjoyed my review of “The Trail We Blaze” and please come back to check out everything we have on JUKEBOX. As always, thank you for your support. J

Below is the scene that “The Trail We Blaze” appears in along with the lyrics.