DuckTales (Woo-oo!) Theme Song took 45 minutes to write + more stories about the song

Makonero

Member
The whole thing took around 45 minutes to write. Mueller presented the resulting demo to the Disney music execs in person—"Mark's really stood out," remembers one of them, Chris Montan.

Mueller was paid "a whopping $1,250" for the song, he says. "And that was only if Disney used the song on the show and it actually aired. Which, fortunately, it did."

The arrival of the chorus is an ecstatic event. Writing it, Mueller realized he'd left a couple of gaps just after the rousing cry of "DuckTales!"—six beats each of valuable potential melodic real estate. Perhaps tapping into his own feelings that day, he instinctively threw in an exhilarated "A-woo-hoo!"

Far more here
 
It's not woo-hoo! It's woo-oo!
There’s just one last thing to clear up. Is it “woo-hoo” or “woo-oo”?

Judging by the spelling of the movie special, and Felicia Barton’s ultra-cool delivery, Disney favors “woo-oo.”

“‘Woo-hoo’ is the spelling I’ve always had in my head for it,” says Mueller, before adding, “Actually, it was more ‘a-woo-hoo’.”

WHO THINKS IT'S WOO-HOO
 
French version sounds amusing:

“He’s the greatest boss of all the city . . . He’s the most powerful . . . He’s worth billions in gold, in dollars.”
 
he only charged $1250 for THE CREATION of a classic song, yet I cant even licence a Beatles song for a corporate event for under 8k?? WTF.
 
Having listened to a few different language intros, it's really interesting how much you can tell the singer is just going for it. And how important that quality really is in making you excited about the song. Some of the "Woo-hoo" replacements are weird though. Arabic (Egyptian) is the weirdest to me, especially since the main singer is so good.
 
This song sold this series to a young me.
So many good memories of this show and the seminal Capcom NES game of the same name.
Why does the new DuckTales have to be on DisneyXD, a channel in a cable package I really don't feel like spending $10 a month on. :P
 
Great theme, though I like the Rescue Rangers theme better; would love to hear some stories about that one (same writer and singer). It's hard to sing though; my god, the key changes!
 
Talespin had a similar genesis - created over a weekend in a time crunch. Took a lot of inspiration from Porco Rosso (my gawd is that movie brilliant) and twisted it into something pretty great.

Except Panda-La, because fuck that entire episode.
 
Having listened to a few different language intros, it's really interesting how much you can tell the singer is just going for it. And how important that quality really is in making you excited about the song. .

This is really really important and why I don't really care for the new version. The girls singing it don't sound like they're into it, they're just singing the words on the page.

There's an old commercial for We The People, I think it was some legal group, dunno if it was nation-wide or just local to SoCal, but the theme song/jingle was "Weeeeee the Peopleeeee" sung in a chorus, and then one dude comes in and just fucking belts out "BRINGING JUUSTICE TO ALLL" and you can tell the dude was like, he was there to give it everything he had. I haven't seen that commercial in maybe 20 years but I still remember the song because of the effort put into it.

Also, Rescue Rangers' theme song. "Ch-ch-ch-Chip and DAAAYLE!" With theme songs you gotta go all in or just go home. The entire point is to get people hyped for the show they're about to watch!
 
There are some big songs out there that were strung together in less than an hour. Paranoid by Black Sabbath was written at the last minute because the album was too short. Highway Star by Deep Purple was created during an exercise to show a reporter how they write songs.
 
This is really really important and why I don't really care for the new version. The girls singing it don't sound like they're into it, they're just singing the words on the page.

There's an old commercial for We The People, I think it was some legal group, dunno if it was nation-wide or just local to SoCal, but the theme song/jingle was "Weeeeee the Peopleeeee" sung in a chorus, and then one dude comes in and just fucking belts out "BRINGING JUUSTICE TO ALLL" and you can tell the dude was like, he was there to give it everything he had. I haven't seen that commercial in maybe 20 years but I still remember the song because of the effort put into it.

Also, Rescue Rangers' theme song. "Ch-ch-ch-Chip and DAAAYLE!" With theme songs you gotta go all in or just go home. The entire point is to get people hyped for the show they're about to watch!

I don't think that's entirely fair to the new song--did you hear it after they fixed the mixing? It sounds way better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=greRWnaQWc4

But to each their own. I think the new intro (design-wise) is ten times better than the original and the music is so good. I'm glad I can use my parent's cable sub to stream DisneyXD on my chromecast.
 
This song that defined my childhood years was only whipped up in less than the space of an hour? Thats blowing my mind right now.
 
Always felt like the lyrics were woo-hoo, and nothing anyone says is going to change that.

Talespin had a similar genesis - created over a weekend in a time crunch. Took a lot of inspiration from Porco Rosso (my gawd is that movie brilliant) and twisted it into something pretty great.

Except Panda-La, because fuck that entire episode.

Porco Rosso the film was released after Tailspin actually, which Mark Zaslove one of the lead showrunners, felt took inspiration from TaleSpin. Tailspin took more inspiration from the anime that Porco Rosso was based off (Hikōtei Jidai).
 
I don't think that's entirely fair to the new song--did you hear it after they fixed the mixing? It sounds way better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=greRWnaQWc4

But to each their own. I think the new intro (design-wise) is ten times better than the original and the music is so good. I'm glad I can use my parent's cable sub to stream DisneyXD on my chromecast.

It sounds better there for sure but the "Woo-ooo" is still lacking any kind of punch like the original had IMO ):
 
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