who wrote the song is this the way to amarillo
Is This the Way to Amarillo "(Is This The Way To) Amarillo" is a song written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield. It is about a man traveling to Amarillo, Texas to find his girlfriend Marie. The reason that Amarillo was chosen for the song was because it was the only place name that Sedaka could think of that rhymed with "willow" and "pillow". The song was originally to be titled "Is This the Way to Pensacola" referring to Pensacola, Florida, but Sedaka felt that Amarillo worked better than Pensacola.[1]
The Road to El Dorado Marylata Jacob, who started DreamWorks' music department in 1995, became the film's music supervisor before the script was completed. Consulting with Katzenberg, Jacob decided the musical approach to the film would be world music.[10] In late 1996, Tim Rice and Elton John were asked to compose seven songs, which they immediately worked on.[11] Their musical process began with Rice first writing the song lyrics, and giving them to John to compose the music. John then recorded a demo, which was given to the animators whom storyboarded to the demo, as the tempo and vocals would remain intact. Eventually, the filmmakers decided not to follow the traditional musical approach by having the characters sing. Co-producer Bonne Radford explained, "We were trying to break free of that pattern that had been kind of adhered to in animation and really put a song where we thought it would be great...and get us through some story points."[10] On February 20, 1999, before the release of Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida, it was announced that ten songs had been composed for El Dorado, and that the release date had been pushed to March 2000.[12]