It wasn't just music that hit the heights in 1994, just look at the caliber of movies released that year:
1. Pulp Fiction
2. The Shawshank Redemption
3. Forrest Gump
4. The Lion King
5. Speed
6. Dumb and Dumber
7. True Lies
8. The Mask
9. Natural Born Killers
10. Clerks
11. Interview with the Vampire
12. Legends of the Fall
13. Four Weddings and a Funeral
14. Stargate
15. Quiz Show
16. The Crow
17. The Professional (Léon)
18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
19. Ed Wood
20. Maverick
21. Reality Bites
22. Clear and Present Danger
23. Heavenly Creatures
24. The Client
25. Little Women
26. Natural Born Killers
27. Street Fighter
28. The Flintstones
29. Little Rascals
30. Blown Away
31. Disclosure
32. Junior
33. I.Q.
34. The Madness of King George
35. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
36. Crooklyn
37. In the Mouth of Madness
38. The Hudsucker Proxy
39. Timecop
40. Wyatt Earp
I don't think we've seen a year chock full of quality like that since 1939.
Music was an integral part of many, if not most, of those films. Many are great. A smaller few are iconic. The Lion King falls into that second category.
If you weren't there in 1977, watching the first 5 minutes of what would later be called "Episode 4: A New Hope", then I don't know what to tell you, pal. I can expend a steamer trunk full of breath trying to describe it to you, but I'll never really be able to nail down exactly what that was like being there. I imagine it's like the difference between just watching the Zapruder film, and actually standing on the grassy knoll that fateful November morning.
The opening sequence to The Lion King is up there in that rarefied atmosphere. Even 30 years removed from it's release, if you do not have goosebumps, or some kind of stirring in your soul, when that final drum sounds and that iconic title card blazes onto the screen, then I don't know what to tell you, pal.
