Last week, I was amazed to find that Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album was celebrating it’s 50th anniversary. This week, another great album celebrates a milestone as the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas celebrates the 30th anniversary of its release on October 12, 1993.
This wasn’t my first experience with Danny Elfman‘s compositions. Just a few years earlier, Burton and Elfman teamed up on the first successful superhero movie in years, Batman. It was Elfman’s music which complimented Burton’s visual masterpiece then, and the former lead singer for Oingo Boingo took it to the next level with Nightmare.
Classic tracks like This Is Halloween, What’s This, and Oogie Boogie’s Song are just a few examples of the incredible music Elfman gave us, but these songs also succeed because of the singing skill of Catherine O’Hara, Ken Page, and even Elfman himself as Jack Skellington’s singing voice. This is one of those albums where you listen to every song from beginning to end before going back to the start of the soundtrack and listening to it again. And again.
As we approach the thick of Spooky Season, make sure you take some time and watch The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s as plain as anyone can see that it was meant to be.
