Alan Menken on His 19th Oscar Nomination: 'I Never Take It for Granted'

Broadway-bound composer Alan Menken spent the morning of January 25 celebrating an amazing feat: his 19th Academy Award nomination. Along with lyricist Glenn Slater (his collaborator on the forthcoming Broadway musical Sister Act), Menken received a Best Original Song nod for “I See the Light,” his show-stopping tune from Tangled, Disney’s animated version of Rapunzel. Menken is already an eight-time Oscar winner for the scores and individual songs from The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Pocahontas and holds the distinction of the most Oscar wins by a living person.

“I don’t take it for granted at all,” Menken told Broadway.com of his latest recognition. “Having been nominated so many times, I think it would be easier for people to say, ‘Let’s go to somebody else.’ In a way, it’s become more of a thrill each time because you know how easy it would be to justify giving it to someone else. I’m extremely proud.”

Menken explained that a musical adaptation of Rapunzel “had been on the wish list at Disney going back to Walt’s day, and people were not cracking it. When they came to me, it was a great feeling—they count on me to reinvent myself every time, because they always want a new musical vocabulary. When we came up with the idea of 50s folk rock, it felt like a great place to work from.” The composer, who most recently garnered three nominations in 2008 for songs written with Stephen Schwartz for Enchanted, added that “I See the Light” was the only Tangled song submitted for Academy consideration.

During a separate interview with Broadway.com, first-time Oscar nominee Glenn Slater praised the use of “I See the Light” (sung in the film by Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi) as “one of those wonderful, rare occurrences where the song and the animation and the story and the characters all culminate at the same moment. I think it’s one of the most beautiful animated sequences in the history of film, and the song captures the feeling of the moment in a way that when you hear it, you know that this is why songs and films go together. It's that magic marriage between sound and image.”

As for Sister Act, which begins previews on March 24 at the Broadway Theatre, Menken said, “Knocking on wood, I think it’s going to be a really, really wonderful show and a wonderful production. There are quite a few book rewrites from what we did in London, and that’s going to be exciting to see. But," he added with a laugh, "as you know, one of the most frightening things one can do in one’s life is to open a Broadway musical!”