“I See The Light,” written by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater for the 2010 animated Disney film Tangled, was nominated for Best Original Song at the Golden Globe and Academy Awards, and won the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.
The film is based on the Brothers Grimm Rapunzel fairy tale, which served as inspiration for Menken to venture into a folk rock idiom for the score. “I wanted folk rock on this,” he said in an interview with Collider. “I thought about her long hair and the freedom she wanted. I immediately thought about Joni Mitchell’s ‘Chelsea Morning’ and all that folk music that I love. Cat Stevens and that energy. I just felt like that would be, on a gut level, a fresh palette to bring to this. So, that was really our way into the score.”
The track, performed by Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi, begins in C and modulates up to Eb for Levi’s verse at 1:39.
modulationoftheday.home.blog 