In the most recent episode of Sophomore Lit, Kathy Campbell and I discuss Peter S. Beagle’s 1968 fantasy novel The Last Unicorn. This is in some ways a companion piece to an episode of Caroline Fulford’s late great podcast, Loose Canon, in which she and I discussed the 1982 Rankin-Bass animated adaptation of the book, arguably the more familiar version of the story. The movie falls into that category of “scarred for life” movies that Gen-Xers saw when they were young1.
Alas, it appears that Loose Canon has disappeared entirely from the internet, and so it falls to me to bring up here on this blog my strange obsession with the movie’s title song, sung by 70s-80s soft rock band America (which was a band from London).
1982 was past America’s heyday, which came in the early 1970s, when they were inescapable on FM radio, with their moody, evocative, but ultimately nonsensical songs like “Horse with No Name,” “Sister Golden Hair,” and “Tin Man.” They also had one of two (!) versions of “Muskrat Love” to be a top 40s hit in 1973. What can I say, it was another time, a time more open to ballads about semiaquatic rodents.
Returning to “The Last Unicorn”: This song, and others in the movie, were written by the amazing Jimmy Webb, one of the last of the old school songwriters who wrote hit songs for other artists, a contemporary of Carole King, Burt Bacharach, Paul Williams, and the like. Webb had a penchant for soaring melodic jumps and for dramatic lyrics that happily went over the top. He wrote “Wichita Lineman,” “Up Up and Away,” and the crazy, operatic “MacArthur Park.”
It’s this combination of soaring melody and histrionic lyrics that makes “The Last Unicorn” such a natural for covers. Just do a search on Spotify or Youtube (and ignore the limp 1994 Kenny Loggins cover) and you will find dozens of earwormy remixes. Most of the singers doing the covering were not even born when the movie came out, but have some formative, melancholic half-memory of seeing the animation, perhaps on HBO, perhaps in the crappy pan-and-scan DVD that was released in 20042. The covers run the gamut from comedy bands to cosplayers to whatever the hell this is.
But for me the most peculiar thing about the song is the life it has in German heavy metal. I have no idea what the specific connection is, but somehow the tune has become a mainstay, particularly for symphonic and death metal bands. My favorite cover is by Munarheim, whose growled delivery really sells the “I’m alive” bit.
