My Funny Friend and Me - From "The Emperor's New Groove"/Soundtrack Version

Sting wrote this with pianist Dave Hartley for what would eventually become Disney's animated film The Emperor's New Groove, a project that began as Kingdom of the Sun. The production was plagued with issues that extended to the music when the studio found demographic research that suggested modern children tuned out during sequences with characters singing. They told Sting, who had written eight songs for the film, that they were eliminating song numbers for characters in favor of background music. In fact, they were scrapping the whole original story, so most of the songs wouldn't even make sense if they did use them. "I was disappointed to say the least, pointing out that my favorite Disney movie, The Jungle Book, would never have been completed if such research was correct," he wrote in Lyrics By Sting. Luckily, the rejected songs were still included on the film's soundtrack. The nightmarish production was also captured on the documentary The Sweatbox, produced and directed by Sting's wife, Trudie Styler.

This peaked at #24 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary Singles chart.

This was nominated for Best Original Song at the 2001 Academy Awards ceremony. It lost to Bob Dylan's "Things Have Changed" from the comedy Wonder Boys.