12. Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride:

We dug up a surprising number of previously missing cues from the original soundtrack. “Victor & Victoria Meet” is quite a substantial one, as is “Victor’s Escape,” which is simply a fun one.  

The thing that stands out for me most when I think about writing for Corpse Bride was the challenge of writing the songs and how totally different the experience was from writing the music for Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. It was particularly vivid as I was writing Charlie and Corpse back-to-back and doing the songs almost simultaneously. Whereas the lyrics and story for Charlie were pretty much a slam dunk in terms of knowing exactly what each song was about and having only to adapt some of Roald Dahl’s wonderful lyrics.

In Corpse Bride, I had some real storytelling to do. Although I had some lyrics to start with from John August, which was a great help, they were done early on. And as the film story developed, some of the songs took on a completely different role than originally intended.

In “Remains Of The Day.” I had a lovely chorus provided by August, but it soon became evident that the actual back-story of how the Corpse Bride became a corpse in the first place was never addressed. So, off I went turning the song into a massive, old-fashioned, tell-a-tale, talk-song, like what might have been done in some crazy old musical, and I had to conjure up a scenario (which I loved doing) of what might have happened to her. And also, in the process, I came up with an idea of a missing ring that might come back into the end of the story. 

But my greatest pleasure in these songs was “The Wedding Song.” I have long been a huge fan of Gilbert and Sullivan but rarely get a chance to dig into that treasure chest. When I wrote “What’s This?” for The Nightmare Before Christmas, I was indeed thinking about “The Major-General’s Song” from The Pirates Of Penzance, where the song would be very fast and almost a tongue-twister at times. So, when I began “The Wedding Song,” I knew this would be a wonderful opportunity to touch on some of this much-loved inspiration. In my mind’s eye (or ear as it were), I really imagined the entire song going from group to group, being sung onstage by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. I was especially overjoyed with the opportunity to hear the ladies singing the spider’s dressing melody and the men robustly announcing the arrival of the bride with their “huzzah” chorus…something I’d been wanting to do for years. Writing and recording this song was truly one of the best personal moments I’ve had on any of Tim’s scores.

And finally, at last, there are a few worktapes here. The first is “Unused Cue.” (Quite an imaginative name isn’t it?) I suppose it’s self-explanatory. “Little Melody” is just that.  And finally, “Introduction” is, in fact, very close to what ended up in the later part of the “Main Titles,” then goes off in several other directions, and ultimately became the introduction for the song “According to Plan”.

—DE