Customer Reviews

Arthur's Really Rockin' Music Mix

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The musical history for the "Arthur" show began with the theme song, "Believe in Yourself," performed by the talented "Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers." The next big musical breaks came in Season Three of the program, with Art Garfunkel lending his singing talents for the "Ballad of Buster Baxter," and the music festival episode. This musical festival episode featured several songs that later made it to Arthur's first album, "Arthur's First Almost Live, Not Real CD (or tape)" an excellent album that continues to sell to this day.

Unfortunately, the crew waded into murky water when they released a christmas CD, "Arthur's Perfect Christmas," based on their less-than-stellar Christmas special, which largely featured rehashes of traditional Christmas songs. One other problem were the unsuitable voice-actor replacments or voice changes.

So what's happening with this new CD? Arthur explains in the liner notes:
"When I decided to make my very own music mix, I asked my friends and family what to put on it...everybody had a different idea. So here's a little bit of everything."

So did it work? Overall, I'd say it did. The writers avoided the biggest worry of many, that they would do songs based on traditional children's tunes. They only did one, "Pop Quiz From Ratburn," based on "Pop Goes the Weasel," and it's actually pretty good. They've hired on a new voice actor for Arthur, and although D.W. still has the same voice-actor, "Has Anybody Seen My Invisible Friend?" is still an excellent song, although the problem is definitely noticeable in her other two songs. "Has Anybody Seen My Invisible Friend?" (Zydeco) is included in my favorites, along with "Two Sides of the Story" (Country Western), and "Fern's Detective Tango" (Tango, duh!) None of them were entirely bad. The dance remix of the main title theme (which has been given the name "Believe in Yourself") is okay, although you get the feeling they could have tried harder. This tune (or perhaps just a portion of it), will play during the end credits for Season Six of the show, which is scheduled to premiere September 24, 2001 on most PBS stations.

Despite what others have said here, this is a fun CD that really captures the warmhearted spirit of the TV show. My kids love it, and my wife and I do too. Recommended.

We love the show, but the "singing" is off tune with a lot of rap, which would be okay if what little singing there was made sense without visuals. I took this one out of the car and told my 4 year old I lost it (I didn't want to hear it again!) and he didn't mind at all!