Are any of the original songs in Mary Poppins Returns?

Q: Are the songs in Mary Poppins Returns the same as the original?

So when Shaiman and Wittman landed the job of writing for Mary Poppins Returns,” opening Dec. 19, they decided not to stray too far from the original. The songs from the original movie and the songs from our sequel have to live in the same lane,” Wittman says, and it happens to be Cherry Tree Lane.”

It's a pretty daunting job following in the footsteps of Dame Julie Andrews, but there was one thing Emily Blunt didn't have to worry about in Mary Poppins Returns.

Table of Contents Show

Are the songs in Mary Poppins Returns the same as the original?
Are the original Jane and Michael in Mary Poppins Returns?
Did Emily Blunt do the singing in Mary Poppins Returns?

Because, apparently, she's not practically perfect in every way.

Speaking to Mail Online at yesterday's (December 12) premiere, Emily Blunt revealed that she was relieved not to be taking on the songs of the original Disney classic.

"Thank god I’m not singing 'A Spoonful of Sugar'," she confessed. "I was never going to be singing the original music.

"I don’t think I could have done if we were."

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,

Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke starred in the original 1964 film

As a writer, Lin-Manuel Miranda astonished the theatre world by telling the story of Alexander Hamilton partly through rap music. The new film gives him one song (A Cover is Not the Book) which flirts gently with the same genre.

But Shaiman thinks musical definitions are fluid.

"Before there was rap, there were things called patter songs which the Victorians knew all about and they overlap. Wittman thinks Gilbert and Sullivan were the grandfathers of rap."

The big hits of the Sherman score, like Feed the Birds and A Spoonful of Sugar, were played endlessly on the radio after their film came out - one reason why people of a certain age know the songs so well.

But in the age of streaming isn't it tough for stage and movie songs to become chart hits?

"That may be true," says Wittman, "but Marc and I write to character because we're theatre writers at heart. We would never think let's get a single out of this.

"So when we gave Lin a number with a touch of rap it's because we know audiences want to hear him perform with that speed and brilliance of his. But also it has to work for his character of Jack the lamplighter."

As collaborators, Shaiman and Wittman don't quite fit the pattern of most songwriting duos for stage and screen. It's not that one writes the music and the other does all the words.

"We write sitting in the same room and we work at the same time," says Wittman.

"Other people work differently, but with us it doesn't quite make sense to ask which comes first - the words or the music? Marc's the composer, but we do the words jointly.

Image source, Jay Maidment

Image caption,

Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda stars as lamp lighter Jack in the film

"So really we play word association - we'll have the book of a musical in front of us, or in this case the screenplay by David Magee. We're looking for ways into a song."

Shaiman says he used to write almost everything at the piano. "But in the last few years we've tended more to write a basic lyric before I go to the piano at all.

"Sometimes we phrase-associate for a few days and then I physically stick those phrases to the piano. And I'll see what calls out to me and what feels like it might be a melody.

"So sometimes we get a dummy song - even if the lyric is silly and maybe very rude. Then I back away from the piano and that's when Scott and I carve the lyric out - line by line, syllable by syllable, rhyme by rhyme."

Wittman volunteers that a title too can be a crucial thing. "But to answer that old question about the words or the music - what has to come first is the idea. Otherwise there's no song."

Next for Shaiman and Wittman comes a new stage show. With Matthew Lopez, writer of the current London stage hit The Inheritance, they're starting work on a new musical version of the classic Billy Wilder film Some Like it Hot.

But first, says Shaiman, they'll need to be allowed off the Poppins publicity machine.

"And it's some merry-go-round, I can tell you. For now we're playing hooky from songwriting - it will take at least two more years to get Some Like it Hot finished. Musicals take a lot of hard work."

Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].

Are the songs in Mary Poppins Returns the same as the original?

So when Shaiman and Wittman landed the job of writing for “Mary Poppins Returns,” opening Dec. 19, they decided not to stray too far from the original. “The songs from the original movie and the songs from our sequel have to live in the same lane,” Wittman says, “and it happens to be Cherry Tree Lane.”

Are the original Jane and Michael in Mary Poppins Returns?

Karen Dotrice played little Jane Banks in the first film, tagging along for adventures with Mary Poppins with her brother Michael. In the sequel Emily Mortimer will play Jane as an adult, helping her brother raise her niece and nephew.

Did Emily Blunt do the singing in Mary Poppins Returns?

Mary Poppins is known for its songs, usually sung by the lead actress, immortalised by the veteran actress Julie Andrews in the 1964 original. The latest rendition of the franchise, Mary Poppins Returns, continues this tradition by having the lead actress Blunt lend her vocals for seven songs.