Return to the main page The soundtrack score was composed and conducted by Henry Mancini, composer of the themes from The Pink Panther and Peter Gunn, with veteran lyricist and screenwriter Leslie Bricusse contributing five original songs. The song "It's Christmas (All Over The World)" was written by Bill House and John Hobbs with Freddie Mercury in mind. While it is known that Mercury recorded a demo for the House/Hobbs song at Pinewood Studios, he was never to make a full commitment to the project, as he and his Queen bandmates had already committed themselves to the Highlander soundtrack. In the end, Mercury turned down the project, stating that he felt that Queen had become overcrowded with requests to work on film soundtracks; as a result, Sheena Easton was ultimately chosen to record the tune. As mentioned on the DVD commentary of the movie by Jeannot Szwarc, Paul McCartney was asked to compose songs for the film. It is unknown why he did not do so in the end, but his song "Once Upon a Long Ago" had been indeed originally composed with the movie in mind.[8]
- Track list
- "Main Title: Every Christmas Eve 1 and Santa's Theme (Giving)" (Mancini/Bricusse)
- "Arrival of the Elves" (Mancini)
- "Making Toys" (Mancini/Bricusse)2
- "Christmas Rhapsody: Deck the Halls/Joy to the World/Hark! The Herald Angels Sing/The Twelve Days of Christmas/O Tannenbaum/The First Noel/Silent Night"
- "It's Christmas Again" (Mancini/Bricusse)2
- "March of the Elves" (Mancini)
- "Patch, Natch!" (Mancini/Bricusse) 3
- "It's Christmas (All Over the World)" (Bill House, John Hobbs)5
- "Shouldn't Do That" (Nick Beggs, Stuart Croxford, Neal Askew, Steve Askew) 4
- "Sleigh Ride over Manhattan" (Mancini)
- "Sad Patch" (Mancini)
- "Patch Versus Santa" (Mancini)
- "Thank You, Santa" (Mancini/Bricusse) 2
1Sung by Aled Jones 2Performed by the Ambrosian Children's Choir. 3Performed by the Ambrosian Singers 4Produced by Ken Scott and performed by Kaja 5Produced by Keith Olsen for Pogologo Corporation, and performed by Sheena Easton.
The soundtrack was originally released on record and cassette by EMI Records in 1985. Soon after, it went out of print and remained unavailable until 2009 when it was released on CD by Singular Soundtrack of Spain. This was a limited run of 1000 copies which sold out immediately upon release. In a rare situation for the label, this production suffered from several issues, most notably a master which had been subjected to heavy noise reduction resulting in a loss of sound quality. Additionally, the left and right channels had been erroneously flipped, a superficial re-edit had been performed on "It's Christmas (All Over the World)", and the song "Shouldn't Do That" by Kaja (Kajagoogoo) had been omitted due to licensing issues. These issues necessitated a replacement pressing to correct many of the problems, save for the licensing issue. The replacement pressing had the unfortunate side-effect of introducing the lossy copies into the secondary market. (To differentiate, the original lossy edition has SER 808 #1 stamped in the center. The replacement disc has SER 879 #1 stamped in the center.[9])
At the time of the 2009 release, Singular Soundtrack became merged with Quartet Records, allowing the label to produce increasingly high-profile projects. Though problematic, the Singular edition had been well-received and had garnered enough ongoing interest to warrant an expansion. In 2012, following a run of successful releases, Quartet Records revisited the earlier release of it, this time with an ambitious goal: a complete score release from the original scoring tapes.
The resultant December 2012 release was an unlimited deluxe three-disc set including sixty-four tracks totaling just under three hours of music, and a 32 page analysis by celebrated historian Jeff Bond.[10] Every piece of score music used in the film was included, as well as several outtakes and alternates. The original soundtrack, which differs from the music recorded for the film, was remastered from the original source material, and the pop songs found on the original soundtrack were all represented, including the Kaja song "Shouldn't Do That".