Movie Music Monday – An American Tale – Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian

We go back to 1986 for today’s movie – Steven Spielberg’s An American Tale.

In the movie, a family of mice from the Ukraine immigrates to the United States, but loses young Fievel along the way. One lonely night, Fievel (Phillip Glasser) and his sister Tanya (Betsy Cathcart), separated by a long distance, sing “Somewhere Out There” in the hopes of reuniting. Spielberg really thought that the song had the potential to be a pop hit. So he got birthday girl Linda Ronstadt (who turns 78 today) and James Ingram to sing the pop version. Their version is a romantic ballad about two separated lovers who take comfort in the fact they are looking out at the same starry sky. Spielberg was right – the song went to #2 on the charts.

Film composer James Horner teamed up with songwriting duo Barry Mann (Who Put the Bomp) & Cynthia Weil to write the tune. Weil said in a 2014 interview, “At that time, which was the mid-’80s, animation was kind of dead. And we thought that this film would barely be seen because it was about a Jewish mouse. And so, we just loved the script and we had the opportunity to work with Steven Spielberg because he was executive producer. And so, we felt very free in writing the songs for this movie because we thought no one would be listening.”

Peter Asher (of Peter and Gordon) produced the song and spoke in an interview about the challenges of the song. “She (Ronstadt) and James Ingram, when we did ‘Somewhere Out There,’ never actually were in the studio at the same time, which is more common now but was a bit less common then. And getting it all to fit together, matching their vibratos and the last note and stuff like that, which again in Pro Tools (a digital editing program) would be two seconds, took quite a while because I had two separate takes of each of them separately. But, for reasons I can’t quite remember, they weren’t in town at the same time.

So, yeah, duets, you’ve got to figure out who sings what and all those obvious challenges and get two great vocals that fit together, ideally at the same time, but often not. I think she and Aaron [Neville] were together at the same time on ‘Don’t Know Much,’ but certainly she and James Ingram on ‘Somewhere Out There’ were not.”

The music video for the song was directed, produced, and edited by Jeffrey Abelson. It was filmed in New York City and features Ronstadt and Ingram, in two separate rooms, sitting at their desks while drawing and coloring scenes from the film. They both look out the windows, in the same manner as Fievel and Tanya in it. Clips from the movie also appear throughout the video.

The song won two Grammy awards at the 1988 ceremony: Song of the Year and Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television. It was also nominated for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, but lost to the Dirty Dancing hit, “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life.”