Musical Montage: Melissa Manchester “Let Me Be Good to You”
With Disney+ finally launching this week, underrated gems like 1986’s The Great Mouse Detective can be rediscovered on streaming. Along with that, we can all rediscover what may the single most horny song in Disney history from that movie, “Let Me Be Good to You” by Melissa Manchester. Fairly early on in the movie, our heroes Basil and Dawson go undercover at a seedy mouse bar called the Rat Trap to uncover clues about the devious plans of the evil Ratigan. The main attraction at the bar is a full-on burlesque show led by Miss Kitty Mouse, voiced by Manchester, who sings “Let Me Be Good to You”, which is basically a song where Miss Kitty is saying she’ll do “anything” for the guys in the bar. It really had the vibe of like a Marilyn Monroe song or the scene in The Mask where Cameron Diaz sings “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You”. Going off that, then CEO Michael Eisner proposed possibly Madonna to sing a song for that scene but it never went anywhere and his original thought was for Michael Jackson to play a character in the bar who sings. Melissa Manchester signed on and wrote the song and she’s an Academy Award-nominated singer who was a staple on Adult Contemporary radio since the 70s with songs like “Midnight Blue” and “Through the Eyes of Love”. Check out the “Let Me Be Good to You” scene below and definitely check out The Great Mouse Detective if you’ve never seen it or haven’t seen it in a while when Disney+ launches.