Authentic Stars Don't Plagiarize

If you see a bright object in the night sky you can tell it does not belongs to the stars, planets, and constellations if it rises from the horizon too quickly. Until Sputnik, the only thing moving quickly across the sky other than the moon was what early observers called the rocks from heaven. It can be breathtaking to catch a meteor streaking across the sky. It is usually a chance event that you happen to witness in a moment. In contrast, if you want to see some late-season constellations you must patiently wait through the night for them to rise above the horizon with the rotation of the earth.

The same can be said of the rise of stars in the music industry. Those who rise too quickly are often quick to fade once their meteoric rise has passed. The one-hit-wonders are here and gone. More frequently these days we see the Sputniks. Something fabricated in a lab and launched with as much public spectacle as can be generated. These are the studio darlings who “write” their own music the same way my daughter draws the pictures in her coloring book, staying within the picture printed for her.

You can tell the difference between these quick rising lab made satellites and the real stars because the real ones took time to rise. Even the Beatles had to play clubs and work at it for two years before their first hit, two more years for Beatlemania to begin and four more years before the White Album. It was a slow steady rise to prominence, and not without its challenges.

The same is true for composers of film scores. Take the iconic, late and great James Horner for instance. Horner spent nearly a decade composing for films that would become blips in the history of the American Film Institute. Early in 1981, he composed for Oliver Stone, but for the Oliver Stone movie with a 14% on Rottentomatoes. It wasn’t until 1982, after 12 years of composing scores, that his Horatio Hornblower-inspired score for Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan that his music drew acclaim. It was four more years until he was nominated for best score for Aliens and another eleven years and many more nominations until his score for Titanic won him an academy award. Along the way, Horner produced magnificent scores for box office successes and flops, but he earned his lofty position in the sky.

At this point, you might be wondering what a meteoric rise looks like when it comes to film score. Take the dynamic duo of Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. With a swift rise on Broadway, the couple quickly became award winners with their first ventures, Avenue Q and the Book of Mormon. They seemed to make a seamless transition to composing for the silver screen in Disney’s smash hit Frozen, with songwriting that some say rivaled Ashman and Menken. Then the couple went on to write the heartwarming, and academy award winning “Remember Me” for the box office hit Coco.

Unfortunately, that is when I began to wonder if the meteor of Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez was a satellite and a creation of stolen technology at that.

I enjoyed Coco immensely—the family message and the redemption of Hector. Hector was a composer himself whose work became award-winning after his death, with the credit stolen by his friend and colleague. “Remember Me,” the work of Hector’s heart, was taken and commercialized by the man that took both his life and credit for the song. Who would do such a thing?

Perhaps if James Horner was still alive he would ask how his music was winning awards for Kristen and Robert.

You see, the heartwarming melody in “Remember Me” was already used to express a cinematic love in James Horner’s score for Krull in 1983. It was the love theme—“Colwyn and Lyssa” (the overlap between the two pieces of music begins at 39 seconds). Krull was a flop in theaters, but the soundtrack is arguably Horner’s most heroic score. When you listen to the Krull soundtrack you can hear Horner giving it his all, regardless of the weak film, because he wanted to be a true star rather than a brilliant flash across the sky.

Now there are differences outside the main theme, so perhaps only some borrowing occurred, but if it was plagiarized perhaps Kristen and Robert should have at least changed the key.

I was not present for the creation of "Remember Me" and cannot say with 100% certainty that Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez stole from the dead to make a song that was stolen from the dead, but give “Remember Me” a listen and then listen to “Colwyn and Lyssa” and remember Horner, an authentic star who rose with the brightest.