This songs gets some negative feedback from people who have a reflexive contempt for Disney animated musicals or Nineties Easy Listening, but it’s actually a very attractive piece. Elton John’s score for The Lion King was admittedly a bit uneven, but the original “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” was definitely one of the better things in it. The melody is quite memorable, one of the best of his later career, and Bernie Taupin’s lyrics for the single version are actually quite a bit more interesting than Tim Rice’s work in the actual movie, drawing on the film’s attempts at philosophy to create a highly evocative abstract poem. True, Easy Listening ballads with excessively abstract lyrics were a bit too common in those days, but now that most of the less interesting ones have been essentially forgotten, we should be able to acknowledge this one as having stood the test of time.
Verdict: Good