The Lion King is one of our favorite movies of all time. We grew up on the animated film and music. To this day, we can sing the songs and when the movie starts to play, we find ourselves able to recite all of the words. However, we were today years old when we learned that it could have been very different.
Nathan Lane told an interesting tidbit to Entertainment Weekly, one that would have made Can You Feel the Love Tonight?, have a very different meaning.
At least in our opinion.
In the film, early versions, had Timon and Pumbaa singing all of Can You Feel the Love Tonight?, but Elton John objected.
“Originally, we sang the whole thing,” Lane said. “Elton John was mortified that the warthog and the meerkat were singing it. He said, ‘The reason I wrote the score was because I wanted to have a Disney love song. I didn’t want it to be sung by the rat and the pig.’”
Well, that would have been different and definitely wouldn’t have felt like a love song. Then again, it’s never really felt like a love song completely, so maybe we’re missing something. Guess a rewatch is in order.
But the biggest question is, does the version of the song, sung by Timon and Pumbaa exist somewhere, and it does.
Lane said, “We did [record] a version. We sang the whole thing in our character voices. It wasn’t like we were going to do our legit Broadway version. We were doing two very character-type voices. It’s hard to do that and be romantic. Elton was right.”
Elton may have been right, but we’d still love to hear the Timon and Pumbaa version.
