The Lion King: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack album for the eponymous Disney film. It contains songs from the film written by Elton John and Tim Rice, and a score composed by Hans Zimmer. Elton John has a dual role of performer for several tracks. Additional performers include Lebo M, Carmen Twillie, Jason Weaver, Rowan Atkinson, Joseph Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Jeremy Irons, Cheech Marin, Jim Cummings, Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, and Sally Dworsky. The album was released on May 31, 1994, on CD and audio cassette. The soundtrack was recorded in three different countries: the U.S., the U.K. and South Africa. It is the best-selling soundtrack album to an animated film in the United States with over 7 million copies sold, with 4,934,000 copies sold in 1994. Hans Zimmer was awarded an Academy Award for Best Original Score at the 67th Academy Awards in 1995. An expanded version of The Lion King soundtrack, featuring 30 minutes of previously unreleased material, was released as part of the Walt Disney Records: The Legacy Collection series on June 24, 2014. In 2014, Hot Topic released a vinyl picture disc of the soundtrack. In 2010, Rhapsody included the soundtrack as one of 10 essential Disney and Pixar soundtracks.

Track listing

All songs are composed by Elton John with lyrics by Tim Rice. All scores are composed by Hans Zimmer.

The Legacy Collection release

Walt Disney Records released an expanded edition of The Lion King soundtrack containing an additional thirty minutes of previously unreleased material from the film, as well as a collection of demo versions of cues. This revision contains a new remastered mix by Alan Meyerson.

Commercial performance

The soundtrack shipped over 10 million copies in the U.S. and eventually was 10× platinum in 1995, thus becoming the biggest-selling soundtrack ever from Disney's 1994 animated feature film. Its certification was promoted to Diamond when the award was instituted in 1999 by the RIAA. According to Nielsen Soundscan the soundtrack, as of April 2014, has sold a total of 7.873 million copies in the US. It is also the best-selling vinyl album in the Nielsen SoundScan era (starting 1991), with 1,043,000 copies sold as of June 2014.

Accolades

Personnel

Song Tracks (1–5 & 10–12) Score Tracks (6–9)

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Decade-end charts

Certifications and sales

! colspan="3" | Original album release ! colspan="3" | Original cast recording ! colspan="3" | Sing-Along shortform ! colspan="3" | Hans Zimmer Re-release