Singer and songwriter Beyoncé has unveiled her executive produced and curated 27-song ‘The Lion King – the Gift album’.
It features cast members from The Lion King along with Kendrick Lamar, her husband Jay-Z and daughter Blue Ivy, Pharrell Williams, Major Lazer, Tierra Whack, 070 Shake, Jessie Reyez and many others. Stream it below.
Beyoncé unveiled the new video for her song “Spirit” during an ABC News primetime special on Tuesday called ‘The Lion King – Can You Feel the Love Tonight? with Robin Roberts’. The special featured interviews with the singer, fellow members of the remake’s new cast and director Jon Favreau, alongside cast members and others involved in the original 1994 animated and music-driven The Lion King film and the stage production that followed.
In the new video for the song “Spirit,” which appears in the reboot of ‘The Lion King’, its soundtrack and on Beyoncé’s executive produced and curated ‘The Lion King – the Gift’, clips from the movie are interspersed with beautiful shots in vibrant locales, including by waterfalls and in bodies of water, flanked by mountains and in night and daytime settings. It features Beyoncé and a cast of dancers in a variety of settings dancing and striking poses in colourful costumes. Her daughter Blue Ivy also makes a cameo. The song about resilience opens with resonant call-and-response voices and features piano and orchestral touches with gospel-tipped choruses. “Rise up to the light in the sky, yeah,” Beyoncé sings. “Watch the light lift your heart up/Burn your flame through the night.”
During Beyoncé’s interview with Roberts, she said that the original film was “the first Disney movie that brought me to tears” and she praised director Favreau and the technologies employed in the new version. She added that the movie has “an incredible spirit” that “takes you on so many emotional rides,” which is captured in the “Spirit” video. “The concept of the video is to show how God is the art director,” she added.
In the new video for the song ‘Spirit,’ which appears in the reboot of ‘The Lion King’, its soundtrack and on Beyoncé’s executive produced and curated ‘The Lion King — the Gift’, clips from the movie are interspersed with beautiful shots in vibrant locales, including by waterfalls and in bodies of water, flanked by mountains and in night and daytime settings
“The soundtrack is a love letter to Africa, and I wanted to make sure we found the best talent from Africa and not just, you know, use some of the sounds and did my interpretation of it,” Beyoncé explained in a preview clip from the special. “I wanted it to be authentic to what is beautiful about the music in Africa.
“A lot of the drums, the chants – all of these incredible new sounds mixed with some of the producers from America, we’ve kind of created our own genre. And I feel like the soundtrack, it becomes visual in your mind,” she continued. “It’s a soundscape, it’s more than just the music because each song tells the story of the film.”
‘The Lion King – the Gift’ was released on Friday, the same day ‘The Lion King’ remake premiered in theatres.
“Spirit” is a song recorded by American singer Beyoncé for the soundtrack of the live-action remake of ‘The Lion King’ and the companion album ‘The Lion King – The Gift’.
Released on July 10, 2019, it was written and produced by Ilya Salmanzadeh, Labrinth and Beyoncé.
The Lion King: The Gift is a soundtrack album for the 2019 Disney live-action remake of The Lion King and her seventh studio album released on July 19 by Parkwood under exclusive license to Columbia. The album was produced and curated by Beyoncé and includes appearances from Jay-Z, Childish Gambino, and Pharrell Williams, Kendrick Lamar, as well as African artists such as Shatta Wale, Wizkid, Burna Boy and Mr Eazi, among others.
The Lion King is a 2019 American musical film directed and produced by Jon Favreau, written by Jeff Nathanson, and produced by Walt Disney Pictures. It is a photorealistic computer-animated remake of Disney’s traditionally animated 1994 film The Lion King. The film stars the voices of Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alfre Woodard, Billy Eichner, John Kani, John Oliver and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, as well as James Earl Jones reprising his role from the original film. The plot follows Simba, a young lion who must embrace his role as the rightful king of his native land following the murder of his father, Mufasa, at the hands of his uncle, Scar.
Plans for a remake of The Lion King were confirmed in September 2016 following the success of Disney’s The Jungle Book, also directed by Favreau. Much of the main cast signed in early 2017 and principal production began in mid-2017 on a blue screen stage in Los Angeles.
The film was theatrically released in the United States on July 19, 2019. It received mixed reviews, with praise for its visual effects, musical score and vocal performances, but criticism for the lack of originality and facial expressiveness in the characters.