UniversalGet your hairbrush microphones ready for Sing!
The holidays are never complete without a feel-good movie you can watch with your family, and this year it's no different with animated movie Sing. But don't be so quick to dismiss it just because it's a "kids' movie" - remember all the unexpected feels you had when you watched Zootopia or sneakily wiped the tears from your eyes in the beginning of Up? Exactly.
Sing centers around koala Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey), the owner of a theater that's in danger of being shut down. In an effort to save his business, he hosts a singing competition, which brings out an array of contestants vying for the grand cash prize. It's like American Idol, but with animals.
And just like Idol, you find yourself rooting for the competitors like stay-at-home pig mom Rosita (Reese Witherspoon), street musician mouse Mike (Seth MacFarlane), punk rock porcupine Ash (Scarlett Johansson), and shy elephant Meena (Tori Kelly). These stars, plus many more, cover more than 85 tracks over the course of the nearly two-hour movie, so it's a difficult task to pick favorites.
Somehow we've managed to narrow the list of musical numbers down to seven and ranked them in order of how blown away we were by these stars' performances. Check them out below!
7. Seth MacFarlane, "My Way": In case you forgot, the Family Guy creator and star is such an established singer that his music has been nominated for both a Grammy and an Oscar, so it should come as no surprise that he can easily breeze through a Frank Sinatra standard without it being a big deal. But in the world of Sing, it is a big deal, since his performance of "My Way" changed the course of his future, giving him the opportunity to enter the realm of possibility that he could ditch street busking to chase his dreams of becoming a real recording artist.
6. Reese Witherspoon, "Firework": Reese isn't a stranger to showing off her singing skills, thanks to her Oscar-winning role as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, but as Rosita, she plays a mom with a passion for singing who had to put her dreams of stardom aside once she welcomed little ones into the world. But when Rosita decides to audition for Buster's singing competition, she goes in with gusto by letting it all out on the stage with a rendition of Katy Perry's "Firework", a song Reese admitted was much harder to record than some people may think.
5. Jennifer Hudson, "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight": Jennifer Hudson, a former American Idol reject-turned-Oscar winner, is one of the few non-contestant characters in Sing, playing former singing diva Nana Noodleman, the investor who will hopefully save Buster's theater. Hudson is one of those exceptional singers who will blow you away with every performance, despite the fact you already know just how good she is. It's no different in Sing, except maybe you're a little caught off guard when her powerhouse vocals come out of a sheep and not a human. It may just be the first time you've cried over a Beatles cover by an animated animal. And it's totally justified.
4. Taron Egerton, "Stay With Me": If you're only familiar with Taron Egerton's acting work from Kingsman: The Secret Service, you are in for a treat. This Welsh actor has an impressive set of pipes on him, and it's ever more prevalent when his character Johnny, a gorilla son of a mobster boss who would rather be a singer instead of following in his dad's criminal footsteps, tries out for Buster's singing competition with Sam Smith's "Stay With Me". Johnny's silky smooth vocals will have you swooning over Johnny, but Taron even more so for years to come.
3. Scarlett Johansson, "Set It All Free": As punk rock porcupine Ash, Scarlett Johansson initially auditions for the competition with her musical partner and boyfriend Lance (Beck Bennett), but he ultimately gets cut from the contest while Ash moves forward. Lance continuously criticizes Ash and dulls her rock star-edge before breaking up with her, but it's this track which helps her find her literal voice again, and proves the only thing she needed to do all along was to stay true to her beliefs and follow her heart. As for the song itself, it's one of the few original tunes made specifically for the movie, and is so catchy that you shouldn't be surprised if your local radio station has it on rotation.
2. Tori Kelly, "Don't You Worry ‘Bout A Thing": The Grammy nominee makes her major movie debut in Sing as the shy elephant Meena, who suffers from a bad case of stage fright. It's so bad that when she shows up to audition, she can't follow through and bails. Semi-spoiler alert: she eventually finds the courage to stand in front of a crowd to show off her skills, and it comes in the form of this classic Stevie Wonder song. The performance will leave you cheering for Meena and bouncing along in your seat without even realizing it.
1. Tori Kelly, "Hallelujah": It's no mistake Kelly holds two of the top spots on this list, because she is just that good. In this scene, Meena is in her own world belting out the Leonard Cohen classic "Hallelujah". It's the passion in her voice that attracts Buster Moon towards her and gives him renewed perspective on the singing competition he thinks is doomed to fail. But Kelly's delivery of a song that's been done hundreds of times on TV talent contests stands out from the rest - it's powerful yet not too overbearing, and moving in a way that reminds us why we as viewers have been tuning in to singing competitions all these years - pure talent.
Sing hits theaters on Dec. 21.
(E! News and Universal Pictures are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)