I have just been reminded of little played/’rare’ Jonathan Larson song, ‘Love Heals’, written as an independent ‘stand-alone’ song, and included as a bonus track on the soundtrack of the recent 2005 Chris Columbus movie-musical adaptation.

(Song performed by ‘Teen Troupe’ – there were no embeddable versions of the RENT version, rare as it is! If you CLICK HERE , you can hear the – awesome- soundtrack version)

I like it a lot, though feel that it is a little too ‘Disney’ to be included along with the soundtrack… they seem to have just gone ‘oh, a film about AIDS, let’s include this too’, despite it being totally the wrong vibe for the musical’s soundtrack.

I am not moaning too much, it’s always good to see Larson’s work distributed as widely as possible!

• Notes on the bonus track Love Heals (taken from the CD case booklet of “RENT: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack”):

Jonathan [Larson] wrote LOVE HEALS while working on RENT, to help in the efforts of Love Heals — the Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS education. Alison was one of the first heterosexual women to contract AIDS from a “one night stand.” He wanted to help her and the organization in the best way he could: with music. Although not written for RENT, we have included this bonus track as a tribute to Jonathan and to help further the cause of AIDS education.

• It is reported that the Broadway production occasionally made use of the song as ‘backing music’ during scene changes.