A powerful song, it raises our expectations for the other songs in the film - which unfortunately don't rise to the occasion. Schwartz seems to use up all his energy on the first song ("Deliver Us") which features singer Ofra Haza and a large chorus singing through the opening sequence of the film. The songs, for the most part, are interesting, but not as good as they could have been. It is therefore unfortunate that due to the limitations of CDs (78 minutes), the choice was made to sacrifice score for songs. How? Well, there are quite a few songs on the album which do not appear in the film - they appear in the end credits, and for the most part have nothing to do with the movie (except for the over-played "When You Believe", performed by Maiah Carey and Whitney Houston).
But in this age where "Music From and Inspired By" seems to be the norm for soundtracks as opposed to "Music From", even the Soundtrack Album ends up being a "Music From and Inspired By" album - even though it truthfully is not. With three (yes, three!) separate CD releases for The Prince of Egypt, DreamWorks Records may have unintentionally flooded the market to such a degree that the public just didn't know what to do! There is the Soundtrack Album, the Nashville Album, and the Inspirational Album. Unfortunately, they were only half-right.
With such talent behind the music, it was almost a guarantee that such collaboration would result in a runaway hit. Schwartz had already won his Oscar for Pocahontas. As composer on The Prince of Egypt, Zimmer would end up merging his own style of scoring with Middle Eastern instruments and the songwriting talent of Stephen Schwartz. Zimmer had already won his Oscar for working on an animated feature film: The Lion King. Such a film would require a score of similar proportions - enter Hans Zimmer. Using a slick mixture of computer-generated imagery and traditional hand-drawn animation, it was certainly a film of "epic" proportions. It not only was DreamWorks' first foray into the realm of animated feature films, but it also heralded a new generation of how animated films are created. The Prince of Egypt was one of the more highly anticipated films of 1998.
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