When one considers that the first Oz-related movie churned out, arguably, the most famous theme song in cinematic history with “Over the Rainbow,” Toronto’s Justin Gray had a somewhat unenviable task: make a new theme song for Oz the Great and Powerful, a prequel decades in the making.
It’s a potential Disney blockbuster, with all the demands, stresses and resources mouse money brings with it. Every songwriter in Los Angeles was circling the project. And then Mariah Carey came on board, and everything that could mean huge success had a fragile flipside — if any one thing went wrong, the whole project could melt away, like the Wicked Witch after a splash of water.
Luckily for Gray, it didn’t, and now his song “Almost Home” will get its chance to shine with the opening of Oz the Great and Powerful this Friday, March 8, all across North America. Gray spoke with CBC Music and told us why he’ll be sending Christmas cards to Carey for the rest of her life.
What does writing a song with Mariah Carey really mean? How does that process work?
It means 14 years of validation for everything I’ve been working towards in my career. If you think about it for a sec, the last theme song was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” so that’s pretty big shoes to fill. We did multiple revisions and eventually Sam Raimi, the director, approved the song and then time came for who would be the artist who was going to come pick up this concept of a song that we started. We got a phone call, myself and the two other co-writers, saying that Mariah Carey was interested. We were just on the floor in disbelief, literally. We just could not — that’s somebody who really hovers over above everybody else in this world in terms of being respected as an artist.
She came in and the rest of it became a very intense collaboration through email, through management and then of course the big marketing people and the director of the video [Raimi] and brand strategists. It became very complex at that time, and I wish we could say we all sat in a room together, but it was very back and forth. Sending lots of MP3s, lots of lyrics, hearing lots of different vocal passes as the song sort of came together in its last moments.
This sounds like just so many people involved in the creation — it’s crazy!
Yeah, but you know what? We needed everybody to be there because this is such a high-profile — not just a property or a copyright — but it’s such a high-profile project for Disney, they wanted to make sure that it was done right and everybody was on board and excited. I tell ya, we were white-knuckling it for several months as this was all coming together. They’d approached some other people who were not — like, they approached Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, a bunch of people had submitted songs and I guess they were sold on ours. When Mariah Carey came in, we were home. No pun intended [laughs]. But we were almost home. It was just right. All the pieces came together at that point.
There’s this public idea that Mariah Carey doesn’t play well with others. What was your experience like?
I can’t speak to that. Mariah Carey will be getting Christmas cards from me for the rest of her life [laughs]. It was great. She picked up what we started and made it — not only made it perfect for the film, but really made it perfect for her. Towards the end of the song, her vocal performance is exceptionally good. To me, as a Mariah Carey fan going back all the way to when I was 18 years old, wanting to be a musician and a songwriter and a producer, listening to those original Mariah Carey records, even at the time she was an artist I always wanted to work with. Here I am, however many years later, and to actually get that opportunity. From now on, for life, the first artist I work with on my bio will be Mariah Carey. How do you top that? [Laughs]
How does a guy from Toronto end up in L.A.? What’s that journey like?
Uhhh, scary? Fortunately I had my wife, Daphne, who used to work at Universal as a music publicist there, was on board. My kids were on board, though that didn’t matter since legally they were bound to come with me. I was very lucky. I had incredible success in Canada in the late '90s/2000s and then my success started to get a little bit more global, reaching the U.K. when I started to work with people like Joss Stone and Amy Winehouse. Then it was just natural to come out to L.A. I just felt like — I mean, I love Canada and it’s always my first home, but I was impatient and it was very hard to get to where I wanted to be, living in Canada.
Follow Andrea Warner on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner
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