Disney Look to Become Guitar Heroes With "Ultimate Band"

Disney will attempt to enter the Guitar Hero/Rock Band arena with Ultimate Band, a new video game for Nintendo's Wii and DS systems. Unlike Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the Disney Interactive Studios-produced Ultimate Band will not require the purchase of fake instruments, instead relying on normal controllers to simulate jamming. Players will also be able to create their own tunes by "laying down tracks for each instrument and applying creative mixing effects." Clearly, Disney has been inspired by the rousing success of music-based games (the Guitar Hero franchise has grossed over $1 billion by itself) and have already dabbled in them (they had recent hits with High School Musical-based singing games). No release date has been set for Ultimate Band, nor have any in-game songs been announced.

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Song Stories

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz | 2008

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."

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