The Lion King (soundtrack)

The Lion King: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the original motion picture soundtrack for the 1994 Disney animated film, The Lion King. It contains songs from the film written by Elton John and Tim Rice, and a score composed by Hans Zimmer. Elton John has a dual role of performer for several tracks. Additional performers include Carmen Twillie, Jason Weaver, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Jeremy Irons, Cheech Marin, Jim Cummings, Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, and Sally Dworsky. The album was released on April 27, 1994 on CD and audio cassette. The soundtrack was recorded in three different countries: the U.S., the U.K. and South Africa. It is the best-selling soundtrack album to an animated film in the United States with over 7 million copies sold, with 4,934,000 copies sold in 1994.

An expanded version of The Lion King soundtrack, featuring 30 minutes of previously-unreleased material, was released as part of the Walt Disney Records: The Legacy Collection series on June 24, 2014. In 2014, Hot Topic released a vinyl picture disc of the soundtrack.

The Legacy Collection release

 * Main article: Walt Disney Records: The Legacy Collection § The Lion King

Walt Disney Records released an expanded edition of The Lion King soundtrack containing an additional thirty minutes of previously-unheard material from the film, as well as a collection of demo versions of cues. This revision contains a new remastered mix by Alan Meyerson.

Chart and commercial success
The soundtrack shipped over 10 million copies in the U.S. and eventually went 10x platinum in 1995, thus becoming the biggest-selling soundtrack ever from an animated film. Its certification was promoted to Diamond when the award was instituted in 1999. According to Nielsen Soundscan the soundtrack, as of April 2014, has sold a total of 7.873 million copies in the US. It is also the best-selling vinyl album in the Nielsen SoundScan era (starting 1991), with 1,043,000 copies sold as of June 2014.

In 2010, Rhapsody called it one of the all-time great Disney & Pixar Soundtracks.