Two excerpts of period music also appear in the film: The Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa and Poor Wand'ring One from the 1880 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan. There is also a musical reference to the 1947 song Galway Bay popularized by Bing Crosby, and "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" is a choral interpretation of a portion of Emma Lazarus's sonnet "The New Colossus". Initially, Bluth and his team were disappointed with the first score recording, but once edited, they found the music worked quite well. The final score became one of the film's strongest points.[1]
The initial songs were written by Tom Bahler, who had worked as a music supervisor and composer. Bahler left the project, in which Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann were later brought on to compose new songs, collaborating with Horner. They were instructed to complete four songs for the film, in a four-week timeframe. After the first round of songs were written, it was decided a special song would be written which Spielberg felt the song had Top 40 hit potential and the composers "felt no pressure to come up with a radio-friendly hit".[1] The song, titled "Somewhere Out There", was performed by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram and produced by Peter Asher.[4] The film version was performed by Phillip Glasser and Betsy Cathcart in the characters of the anthropomorphic mice Fievel and Tanya Mousekewitz.[1]
Release
An official soundtrack containing 14 tracks from the film was first released on November 21, 1986, by MCA Records, and was made available on audio cassette, vinyl record, and CD.[5] It was later released digitally by Geffen Records on February 5, 2013.[6] An expanded edition of the score was released by February 12, 2019, consisting of previously unreleased cues and demos.[7]
Evan Cater of AllMusic summarized "Horner's lush and tuneful orchestrations often emulate Spielberg's favorite composer, John Williams. His songs, co-written with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, pale slightly in comparison with the instrumental score. But they are charmingly performed by actors like Philip Glasser, Christopher Plummer and Dom DeLuise, and Weil's lyrics are quite clever, especially on "There Are No Cats in America" and "Never Say Never.""[8] A reviewer from Filmtracks wrote "All put together, An American Tail stands among Horner's most effective works in the children's genre, eclipsing most of what he produced for similar topics in subsequent years [...] Few people give the composer credit for writing and nurturing six themes in this score, instead getting hung up on the classical music references or other aspects typical to Horner's writing. The composer, however, packages this effort well enough to transcend these traits and offer a score that, if only better songs had accompanied it, might have merited a five star rating."[9]
Jonathan Broxton of Movie Music UK wrote "Despite the superficial childishness of the film it accompanies, do not be fooled into thinking that the score for An American Tail is somehow a lighter, lesser work. This score represents James Horner at his 1980s best, writing music that drips with emotion, embraces rich orchestrations, and engages in intelligent interplay between three or four memorable recurring themes. Add to this some unexpectedly dense and vibrant action music that will appeal to fans of Krull and Willow, and a handful of decent songs, and An American Tail is a winner all the way."[10] James Southall of Movie Wave wrote "What makes Horner's scores for animations so good is that they really don't sound like scores for animations. That may seem a curious thing to say, but he genuinely takes the best aspects of animation music – memorable tunes, a great sense of fun, strong drama – but instead of the usual Mickey Mousing, he paints in broad dramatic strokes, just as he does in his other scores, and ends up with music that flows beautifully, moves dramatically from one point to another, and – most remarkably of all – still comes in reasonably lengthy tracks which feel like complete pieces of music in their own right. This is what makes it such a pity that he doesn't do animation any more; but still, at least we’ve still got the likes of An American Tail to savour."[11]
Billboard (Joe Lynch),[12]The Hollywood Reporter,[13]USA Today (Patrick Ryan)[14] and The Guardian (Andrew Pulliver)[15] ranked the album as one of his ten best scores. Sean Wilson of Den of Geek wrote "The first step in Horner's longstanding collaboration with animator Don Bluth signalled his intuitive flair for family film scoring. With the very nature of animated soundtracks requiring long sequences of music hitting a great number of specific cue points, Horner found a perfect outlet for his warm and effusive style, able to range from light menace to heart-melting beauty in the course of just a few seconds."[16]
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