Last week, you may have noticed me waxing lyrical about the Harmonious soundtrack in my Tessitura 5K recap. You know Harmonious, yes? Epcot fireworks. Yeah. Doubtless you thought nothing of my using fireworks music to run; that’s practically de rigueur in the runDisney community. But what if I told you… there’s an extended version of the soundtrack?
It was YouTube that drove me to find this treasure. Normally I listen to a lot of my Disney attraction soundtracks, background music, etc. off YouTube. But my God, guys, the advertisements on that platform have gotten SO AGGRESSIVE.
I don’t mind an ad at the beginning, and I don’t even begrudge YouTube creators getting that money. What I do begrudge is how freaking INCESSANT it’s become. You can scarcely go 2 minutes on some of these videos without having to wait to skip yet another advertisement. This is irritating enough when you’re watching something, but if you’re trying to listen to music? Ugh. While running? Ugh!
So when queuing up my tunes for the 5K, I decided to eschew YouTube entirely on the extreme off chance there was another way… and there was! Amazon Music has a full soundtrack version of Harmonious. The only difference is there’s no narrator at the beginning or end, but as I’ve always found her slight vocal fry vaguely distracting that’s no problem.
Did I say that was the only difference? LIES! Having now listened to the album in its entirety, I can tell you that several of the tracks are extended, especially the India, Africa, and Latin American parts. It’s nothing major, just an additional verse or some added bars, but it’s enough to bump up the total runtime by a couple minutes. And every extra minute I can run to a Disney song is a good one.
So go ahead. Fire up the Harmonious soundtrack next time you go for a short ‘n sweet run. With the exception of the last song (talk about ending on a downer), I find it a brilliant series of kicks to the pants. It’s my go-to when I need external energy sources.
Find it on Amazon Music Unlimited…
…or Spotify if you’d rather.
Or other places, I’m sure!
But not YouTube. You know why.
Don’t forget, you can follow FRoA on Twitter @fairestrunofall and on Instagram @fairestrunofall. If you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment or email fairestrunofall@gmail.com. See ya real soon!
Oooh I will definitely have to listen to this! I have the USA track on the regular rotation on my running playlist but I bet a lot of the other songs are great to run to as well. Side note – YouTubers who have ads can set which types of ads they want on their videos. I hate the ones in the middle of something too so I have mine set to only do ads at the beginning or a little pop up at the bottom. I mean obviously more ads, more money, so I’m guessing that’s why most people do it – but I wish they wouldn’t.
Awakening, Middle East, India, and Latin America all deserve a spot on your playlist! China, Africa, and Europe are all good too (especially the Brave bit), but I find they skid a teensy too close to lagging. They never actually cross the line but the energy isn’t quite as up as the others, especially without the visuals.
I don’t mind an ad at the beginning at all! But alllll the interstitial ads got so bad I installed an ad blocker on my laptop browser. So they’ve ruined it for everybody. Hmph!