I fell into a slightly ridiculous musical rabbit hole and thought this might be the right place to share it.
I was listening to Kurt Weill’s Johnny Johnson (1936), and in the second act there’s a very short piece called “Johnny’s Dream”, during the scene in which Johnny dreams of Minny Belle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUWqiURFAjM&list=RDwUWqiURFAjM&start_radio=1
The moment it started, I had this completely unexpected reaction:
this sounds like Zelda.
It genuinely sounds to me like music you could hear while wandering into a little village, entering someone’s house, or stumbling across one of those slightly surreal encounters Zelda is so good at.
Obviously I’m not suggesting that Koji Kondo heard this piece or that there is any actual influence. I have absolutely no evidence for that. It may just be my brain making an association.
But then I started going down the rabbit hole, and the coincidences became pretty funny.
The name The Legend of Zelda, meanwhile, comes from Zelda Fitzgerald.
And then, completely separately, I discovered that Weill later wrote the incidental music for the 1946 play A Flag Is Born, which actually includes a character named Zelda.
None of this proves anything whatsoever, obviously. It’s just an absurd chain of coincidences.
But discovering all of that after hearing “Johnny’s Dream” and immediately thinking “this sounds like Zelda music” made the whole thing too amusing not to share.
So I’m curious:
Does “Johnny’s Dream” sound Zelda-like to anyone else?
I’d also love to know which specific Zelda track it reminds you of, because I have the feeling there’s something very particular I’m subconsciously connecting it to and I can’t quite place it.