Film / music / inheritance
A Voice of His Own
The Book of Life, the shadow of Coco, and the courage to sing differently
For The Book of Life, that question is often whether Pixar borrowed from it. Jorge R. Gutiérrez’s animated feature arrived in 2014; Coco followed in 2017. Both concern a young Mexican musician, family expectations and a journey among the dead. Both imagine an afterlife in which remembrance has consequences. The resemblance is substantial enough to deserve discussion.
Yet the comparison can become a peculiar form of disappearance. A film so concerned with being remembered finds itself remembered chiefly as the one that came before Coco.
Listening offers a way out of that conversation. The Book of Life has a musical personality that belongs to its particular mixture of tenderness, ornament, irreverence and excess. Within its jumble of romantic standards, alternative rock, Mexican repertoire and comic interruptions, a young man gradually discovers what his voice can do.
At first, he wants somebody to love him. Eventually, he learns how to answer somebody else’s pain.
Spoilers follow for The Book of Life, with discussion of Coco.
The difficulty of arriving first
The development history complicates any straightforward accusation of copying. Lee Unkrich began exploring a Día de Muertos story after Toy Story 3 and pitched the project in September 2011. He has said Pixar was already developing its film when it learned of Gutiérrez’s production, and that watching The Book of Life reassured the team that the stories were sufficiently different.[1][2]
That is the filmmaker’s account. It cannot settle every possible question of influence, but release order alone cannot establish a direct creative debt either. Mexican traditions are also a much deeper source for both films than a comparison between two Hollywood productions can adequately express.
What The Book of Life can claim without qualification is its earlier arrival and its distinctive expression. It deserves attention as a work by a Mexican filmmaker, rather than merely a possible source for Pixar.
Their emotional interests diverge, too. Coco gradually redirects its young musician’s attention from the greatness he imagines in a famous performer towards the private relationships that have made his life possible. The Book of Life places greater emphasis on whether love for your family requires obedience to the life they have chosen for you.
For Manolo, that conflict is audible. The family expects a bullfighter. He wants to sing.
Borrowed songs, recognisable feelings
A young man seeking his own voice might seem an unlikely vehicle for a soundtrack full of covers. Why should personal expression arrive through Radiohead, Elvis, Mumford & Sons and Rod Stewart?
Because that is often how personal expression begins. A song written by a stranger can describe something we have been unable to articulate. We borrow it, repeat it and eventually find that it has become attached to our own experience.
The Book of Life makes this ordinary process conspicuous. Its pop songs interrupt any expectation of historical realism. Their familiarity reaches across the carved figures and elaborate storybook scenery to offer an immediate emotional foothold.
Santaolalla has explained that Gutiérrez already had a strong vision for the covers. Reworking them was part of the film’s musical construction, alongside the score and the original songs he wrote with Paul Williams.[3]
The approach sometimes draws attention to itself. Recognition can briefly replace immersion: we notice the song choice before we notice what the character feels. But at its best, familiarity becomes a means of getting closer.
“I Will Wait” establishes affection as something that survives separation and the passage into adulthood. Its acoustic momentum makes waiting feel purposeful, a promise carried forward. There is a romantic danger in that idea: patience cannot entitle somebody to another person’s love. María’s freedom to choose matters as much as Manolo’s constancy.
“Can’t Help Falling in Love” offers a gentler surrender. Its lilting movement gives affection room to unfold. Where a competitive declaration might insist on being answered, this melody can simply inhabit the feeling.
Then there is “Creep”.
The awkwardness beneath the serenade
“Creep” is an unusually uncomfortable song to bring into a family romance. The Radiohead recording contains shame, fascination, alienation and flashes of hostility. Its emotional world is less reassuring than the familiar description of somebody feeling inadequate around the person they love.
Manolo’s performance brings the tenderness forward. Without the original recording’s defining eruptions of electric-guitar aggression, the song feels more exposed than confrontational. Diego Luna’s voice helps. Its appeal lies in the impression of a person risking a feeling, rather than a singer demonstrating complete command of it.
That transformation also narrows the song. Some of its troubling ambiguity falls away as it becomes a sympathetic expression of insecurity. We can appreciate the adaptation while recognising what it softens.
Within Manolo’s story, however, the choice is revealing. Being able to sing does not mean knowing how to feel comfortable in front of someone who matters to you. Talent can give insecurity a form without making it disappear.
The film allows its musician to be awkward. That makes the more assured romantic declaration of “I Love You Too Much” feel like an opening rather than a foregone conclusion.
What the hands are for
One of the two central Santaolalla–Williams originals, “I Love You Too Much” gives Manolo a declaration that belongs specifically to this story.[4]
Its directness suits him. The melody sustains a feeling rather than qualifying it with elaborate verbal cleverness. He is sincere, and the performance asks us to stay with that sincerity.
The title contains a small uncertainty. Love described as “too much” can sound generous, but it can also imply an intensity greater than the other person has asked to receive. The film leans towards wholehearted devotion; the phrase nevertheless retains that hint of emotional excess.
More quietly, the guitar offers an alternative use for the hands expected to master bullfighting. Skill remains important. So do courage, practice and public exposure. Manolo wants to direct those abilities towards expression.
The Spanish-language counterpart, “Te Amo y Más”, lets the same musical feeling travel through another pattern of vowels, stresses and phrasing. It offers a useful reminder that melody and delivery carry emotional information alongside literal meaning.
But romantic expression is only the beginning of what the film will ask of him.
When a song becomes an apology
“The Apology Song” is where The Book of Life’s musical choices become inseparable from its moral imagination.
Confronted with the suffering embodied by the bulls, Manolo refuses to prove himself through another killing. The expected heroic encounter changes because he recognises something in the creature before him that the language of conquest cannot accommodate.
Its pain deserves an answer.
The scale of the scene makes the answer especially moving. An enormous threat is met by a human voice offering tenderness. Singing leaves him vulnerable, and he proceeds anyway.
This develops the family conflict beyond the familiar instruction to follow your dreams. Manolo must decide how to love an inheritance that includes harm. Remembering his ancestors honestly requires him to see more than their achievements.
Gutiérrez has described an early version of the sequence in which Manolo explicitly apologised to the bulls and to his father. The finished song became the film’s emotional heartbeat.[5]
That double address matters. Refusing a family’s expectations need not cancel affection for the people who hold them. Equally, affection cannot make every expectation acceptable. The song finds a way for Manolo to remain connected while changing what he will carry forward.
His appeal also leaves forgiveness with the being who has suffered. The Spanish version’s title, “Si Puedes Perdonar”, foregrounds that possibility. An apology can be offered sincerely; its acceptance cannot be claimed in advance.
La Santa Cecilia’s separate recording then gives the composition another life. Released from the immediate confrontation, the song becomes something other voices can inhabit. A private act of courage enters a shared repertoire.
Room for the ridiculous
Around these emotional anchors, the soundtrack makes room for less elevated pleasures.
“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” turns attraction into comic self-advertisement. “Just a Friend” brings romantic uncertainty down to the level of an awkward singalong. These passages can feel like interruptions, but they also prevent music from becoming an exclusively noble activity. People sing to impress, amuse, compete and make fools of themselves.
“Cielito Lindo” offers another kind of participation: the pleasure of a song that already belongs to many people. Its presence suggests that music itself can be an inheritance. Manolo’s problem is therefore more specific than tradition opposing creativity. His family has privileged one version of tradition over the possibilities available within it.
Kinky’s “Más” and the Café Tacvba contribution to “El Aparato / Land of the Remembering” broaden that musical world further. Mexican identity includes contemporary bands, restless rhythms and individual listening histories alongside familiar standards.
Santaolalla recalled Gutiérrez describing his production work with Latin alternative artists as part of the soundtrack to his own life.[6] That helps explain the collection’s eclecticism. A person’s musical memory rarely observes the neat boundaries of a genre shelf.
The instrumental selections provide other changes of scale. The Morricone reference in “The Ecstasy of Gold” brings the grandeur and expectancy of a western confrontation. “Visiting Mother” directs attention towards a relationship whose significance survives all the extraordinary surroundings. The afterlife can be spectacular, but recognition may remain intimate.
A voice that others can join
The two versions of “No Matter Where You Are” gather the soundtrack’s concern with connection into a readily shared promise. Us the Duo gives it the shape of companionship; the cast recording brings the sentiment into the film’s wider community.
That expansion feels appropriate. Earlier, Manolo’s singing marks his difference from his family. By the end, musical participation can accommodate belonging. His voice has not become acceptable because he has abandoned what distinguishes it.
“Live Life” releases those ideas into bright, accessible pop. Its affirmation gains specificity from what precedes it: being alive involves making choices while there is still time to make them.
The soundtrack is busy, sometimes almost impatient with quiet. Santaolalla himself acknowledged that he would have welcomed more space and silence.[3] Yet its abundance also suits a film in which memory contains jokes, embarrassment, favourite songs, devotion and grief together.
Returning to Coco, the comparison becomes more rewarding when we listen for the different work their music performs. Coco’s “Remember Me” changes meaning as it moves between public performance and private affection. The Book of Life gives its central transformation to the singer himself.
Manolo first uses music to make his feelings known. When it matters most, he uses it to acknowledge a feeling beyond his own.
That is a good reason to remember this film in its own voice: a young man stands before the pain his family has helped create, and sings with enough courage to let it change him.
Sources and further reading
- Screen Daily: Unkrich and Molina on making Coco.
- Slashfilm: Lee Unkrich on Coco and The Book of Life.
- Anime Superhero: Interview with Gustavo Santaolalla.
- Sony: Official soundtrack announcement and track listing.
- Anime Superhero: Interview with Jorge Gutiérrez.
- Music Times: Interview with Gustavo Santaolalla.