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It’s one of the best things he ever wrote. Kamen surrounds his theme with period accoutrements – harpsichord, light percussion, anvils – to give it a medieval sound, and the whole thing climaxes with energy and panache. #Bryan adams robin hood song full#The theme actually carries four specific motifs within it – a warm theme for Robin heard on French horns (0:19), a noble fanfare for trumpets (0:41), a dynamic rhythmic motif (0:55), and a swashbuckling sequence full of triumphant heroism (1:09) – which, as the score develops, are often separated and played independently, to represent different aspects of Robin’s journey. The thing opens with a bang with “Overture and A Prisoner of the Crusades (From Chains to Freedom),” which builds from one of Kamen’s famous cello ostinatos (something which Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer appropriated for Pirates of the Caribbean almost a decade later), until the brass bursts forth with a joyous performance of the score’s triumphant main theme. The original soundtrack album for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves comprised eight reasonably long suites, each containing several cues within them. #Bryan adams robin hood song movie#His most famous scores prior to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves were things like Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, the Bond movie Licence to Kill, and genre efforts like The Dead Zone and Highlander, none of which really tapped into what made Kamen such a terrific composer in the final decade of his career. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was also one of the first scores which, I feel, gave some indication as to who Kamen was as a person – a man of deep feelings, a warm and adventurous spirit, and a romantic at heart. The score, however, is one of the best and more comprehensive distillations of what made Michael Kamen’s music so superb the expansive orchestral performances, the richly textured orchestrations featuring so many of his personal mannerisms, the unique and idiosyncratic rhythmic content, the memorable themes, and the broad emotional appeal. #Bryan adams robin hood song plus#It also won Kamen, Lange, and Adams a Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media, plus a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year, and was one of Kamen’s two Oscar nominations for Best Original Song. That song was everywhere in the summer of 1991 it topped the charts in the UK for sixteen consecutive weeks – still a record, at the time of writing – and sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. Despite all the outstanding work he produced over the years, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is by far Kamen’s most famous and popular score, and the accompanying soundtrack was his best-selling album by some considerable margin – although, to be fair, that was most likely due to the fact that it included the song “Everything I Do I Do It For You,” which Kamen wrote with uber-producer Mutt Lange for Canadian rocker Bryan Adams. One other aspect of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves which over-achieves is its score, written by the late great Michael Kamen. It features some rousing action sequences, Morgan Freeman dispenses sage wisdom wherever he goes as the Moorish warrior Azeem, there’s a lovely Maid Marian in the shape of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and – best of all – we have Alan Rickman hamming it up, chewing the scenery, and having a ball as a Sheriff of Nottingham whose tongue is as cutting as his blade. Despite this, and despite some terrible lapses in geographic specificity (Robin walks from Dover to Loxley via Hadrian’s Wall in a single day, a trip of roughly 470 miles), the film is nevertheless a terrifically entertaining romp. Somewhat astonishingly, the producers cast Hollywood star Kevin Costner in the title role, and he made no attempt to do anything approaching an English accent, and in the end sounded less than he was from Sherwood Forest and more like he was from Malibu Canyon, going to “sup with his father in Notting-HAM”. One of the biggest blockbusters of 1991 was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, a big-budget historical action epic directed by Kevin Reynolds, based on the classic legends of the medieval English outlaw Robin Hood. ![]()
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