Friend Like Me (Aladdin)

There is a volcanic, almost reckless joy at the center of this track — big band brass detonating in every direction, the rhythm section swinging with the looseness of a runaway carnival. Robin Williams doesn't so much sing as inhabit the space between performance and pure improvisational chaos, his voice shape-shifting from silky croon to rapid-fire patter to operatic swoop within single measures. The song is essentially a magic act staged as a vaudeville number: the Genie is selling the impossible, and Williams sells it with the conviction of a man who truly believes every word. Lyrically it's an exercise in excess — an avalanche of promises, each one more absurd than the last, tumbling over each other until the sheer volume of them becomes the point. It belongs squarely to the Disney Renaissance of the early nineties, when animated musicals were allowed to be genuinely theatrical rather than merely pleasant. Reach for this when you need to feel like every door in the world is swinging open at once — or when you want to remind yourself what it sounds like when a performer is having the time of their life.