The 1990s File Feature
At The Beginning
"At The Beginning": Richard Marx, Donna Lewis, and the "Anastasia" Soundtrack"At The Beginning" is a pop duet performed by Richard Marx and Donna Lewis, writ…
01 The Story
"At The Beginning": Richard Marx, Donna Lewis, and the "Anastasia" Soundtrack
"At The Beginning" is a pop duet performed by Richard Marx and Donna Lewis, written by Marx and produced for the animated feature film Anastasia, released by Fox Animation Studios and Twentieth Century Fox in November 1997. The film was a major production effort by Fox to compete with the Disney animated features that had dominated family entertainment through the early 1990s, and its soundtrack was conceived as a significant commercial component of the overall release strategy. The studio invested in established pop talent to give the soundtrack commercial credibility alongside the film's visual and narrative ambitions.
Richard Marx was a well-established adult contemporary star by 1997, having achieved multiple number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including "Hold On to the Nights," "Satisfied," "Right Here Waiting," and "Now and Forever." His songwriting and production work for the Anastasia soundtrack represented an expansion into film music that capitalized on his demonstrated commercial pop credentials and his melodic songwriting sensibility. Donna Lewis had achieved mainstream success in 1996 with the single "I Love You Always Forever," which spent 35 weeks on the Hot 100 and reached number two, establishing her as a significant pop presence in the mid-1990s with a distinctive breathy, intimate vocal style that translated well to romantic material.
The pairing of Marx and Lewis for the film's closing number was a deliberate commercial strategy by Fox's music division. Both artists had demonstrated strong appeal among adult contemporary radio listeners, and the closing duet format of animated film soundtracks had been commercially validated by Disney with songs like "A Whole New World" from Aladdin (1992) and "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" from The Lion King (1994). "At The Beginning" was designed to occupy a similar position: a melodically accessible, emotionally resonant pop song that could function both as a satisfying emotional conclusion to the film narrative and as a standalone commercial single capable of radio success independent of the film.
The song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 8, 1997, entering at position 73. It climbed steadily through the holiday period and into early 1998, reaching its peak position of 45 on January 24, 1998. The single spent a total of 20 weeks on the chart, benefiting from the sustained cultural presence of the Anastasia film through the holiday season and into the new year. The film was a family entertainment choice through the holiday period, giving the single an extended period of promotional association with a product that remained in cultural circulation well beyond its premiere date.
The song also performed strongly on the Adult Contemporary chart and received significant radio rotation across multiple formats. The Anastasia soundtrack was commercially successful overall, and "At The Beginning" was its most prominent pop single. The film itself received positive critical reception, including Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score (composer David Newman) and Best Original Song ("Journey to the Past," performed by Aaliyah). The competitive Oscar context notwithstanding, "At The Beginning" proved the more commercially durable single in terms of pop chart performance, reflecting the established commercial bases of both Marx and Lewis in the adult contemporary format.
The song was performed by Richard Marx and Donna Lewis at various television appearances around the time of the film's release and was included on both the film's official soundtrack album and on subsequent compilations of 1990s adult contemporary pop. Its 20-week chart run placed it among the more successful animated film singles of the decade outside the Disney releases that dominated the category during this period of intense competition between studios for the family entertainment market.
"At The Beginning" remains a frequently cited example of successful branded pop created for animated film, demonstrating how established adult contemporary artists could lend commercial credibility to family entertainment properties while reaching audience demographics that their own solo recordings might not have accessed. For both Richard Marx and Donna Lewis, the collaboration represented a commercially significant moment in careers that had each been built on the adult contemporary format's loyal and consistent listenership.
02 Song Meaning
Journey as Metaphor: The Meaning of "At The Beginning"
"At The Beginning" by Richard Marx and Donna Lewis is a song structured around the paradox of arriving at a beginning. In most narrative frameworks, a beginning precedes everything else; it cannot be arrived at through effort or time, only found at the start before anything else has happened. But the song uses this apparent contradiction to make a specific emotional argument: that the completion of a difficult journey, rather than representing an end or a conclusion, reveals itself as the true starting point of something genuinely meaningful. The long road leads not to a destination but to a renewed and earned point of origin.
This interpretation connects directly to the narrative of the Anastasia film, in which the title character undertakes an arduous journey to discover her identity and find her place in the world after years of displacement and loss. The song's closing position in the film gives it a structural function: it marks the moment when the journey is complete and the protagonist can begin her life from a position of self-knowledge and love rather than confusion and absence. The "beginning" is therefore a beginning with full awareness, qualitatively different from an innocent or ignorant starting point because it carries the wisdom accumulated through everything that preceded it.
The duet format carries its own meaning in this context. Two voices arriving at the beginning together suggests that the destination is not a solitary achievement but a shared one. The journey has been taken in company, and the beginning that awaits is collaborative rather than individual. This reading makes the song not merely a conventional love song but a song about partnership as a precondition for meaningful arrival, about the particular kind of destination that only becomes accessible when the journey is taken with someone else.
Richard Marx's songwriting characteristically emphasizes emotional directness and melodic accessibility, and "At The Beginning" exemplifies this approach within the specific constraints of animated film scoring. The song must communicate its central idea clearly enough to function for a general audience that includes children while remaining emotionally sophisticated enough to engage adult listeners. The paradox of the beginning-as-destination achieves this balance by being simple enough to grasp on first hearing and resonant enough to reward subsequent reflection from listeners who bring their own experiences of long journeys and hard-won arrivals to the material.
The song also participates in the broader tradition of pop music that treats romantic love as a form of homecoming. To arrive at a beginning with someone is to find in them a sense of origin, a feeling of having come to the right place after a long and uncertain journey. This emotional logic has been a consistent feature of love poetry and popular song across multiple decades and cultural contexts. Marx and Lewis deliver it within the contemporary adult contemporary idiom with the melodic clarity that defined both artists' commercial appeal, ensuring the emotional message remained accessible across the demographic range of the film's audience.
As a closing song for a film about self-discovery and belonging, "At The Beginning" accomplishes its emotional task efficiently: it resolves the film's narrative tension on an affirmative note while leaving the audience with a melodic and lyrical impression that reinforces the emotional experience of the preceding story. The song's 20-week chart longevity indicates that it retained meaning outside the film context as well, functioning as a standalone pop statement about arrival, partnership, and the beginnings that only become visible after the journey has been completed and the traveler has the perspective to recognize where they have arrived.
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