Music Friday: Dastardly Coconut Crab Tamatoa Is 'Shiny' in Disney's 'Moana'

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you wickedly fun songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, a giant-sized, treasure-hoarding coconut crab named Tamatoa brags about sparkling like a wealthy woman's neck in “Shiny” from Disney’s 2016 animated blockbuster, Moana.

The song's official video has been viewed more than 596 million times on YouTube.

Voiced by New Zealand’s Jemaine Clement, Tamatoa is a dastardly — but lovable — Disney villain who collects rare sea treasures from the seabed and conspicuously displays them on his shell. Among the treasures he’s salvaged from the depths are pearls, diamonds, gold and a power-granting magical fishhook that was lost by the film's hero, Maui.

The crab sings, “Watch me dazzle like a diamond in the rough / Strut my stuff; my stuff is so… Shiny.”

Even though Tamatoa is able to overpower Maui, he is no match for the strong-willed and clever teen, Moana, who tricks the crab into relinquishing the magical hook.

Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mark Mancina, “Shiny” is the eighth track from the two-CD set titled Moana: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. The album peaked at #2 on the US Billboard 200 and charted in 17 countries. The single reached #6 on Billboard‘s Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart.

Miranda is the Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy and Tony Award-winning composer, lyricist and actor, who is best known as the creator and original star of Broadway’s Hamilton. Clement is a comedian, actor, voice actor, singer, writer, director, multi-instrumentalist and one half of the musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords.

Moana was released in theaters on November 23, 2016, and went on to gross more than $687 million worldwide.

Please check out the official video of the animated Tamatoa (Clement) performing “Shiny.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along…

“Shiny”
Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mark Mancina. Performed by Jemaine Clement.

Well, Tamatoa hasn’t always been this glam
I was a drab little crab once
Now I know I can be happy as a clam
Because I’m beautiful, baby

Did your granny say listen to your heart
Be who you are on the inside
I need three words to tear her argument apart
Your granny lied!
I’d rather be…

Shiny
Like a treasure from a sunken pirate wreck
Scrub the deck and make it look…

Shiny
I will sparkle like a wealthy woman’s neck
Just a sec!

Don’t you know
Fish are dumb, dumb, dumb
They chase anything that glitters (beginners!)

Oh, and here they come, come, come
To the brightest thing that glitters
Mmm, fish dinners

I just love free food
And you look like seafood
(Like seafood)

Well, well, well
Little Maui’s having trouble with his look
You little semi-demi-mini-god
Ouch! What a terrible performance
Get the hook (get it?)
You don’t swing it like you used to, man

Yet I have to give you credit for my start
And your tattoos on the outside
For just like you I made myself a work of art
I’ll never hide; I can’t, I’m too…

Shiny
Watch me dazzle like a diamond in the rough
Strut my stuff; my stuff is so…

Shiny
Send your armies but they’ll never be enough
My shell’s too tough

Maui man, you could try, try, try
But you can’t expect a demi-god
To beat a decapod (look it up)

You will die, die, die
Now it’s time for me to take apart
Your aching heart

Far from the ones who abandoned you
Chasing the love of these humans
Who made you feel wanted
You tried to be tough
But your armor’s just not hard enough

Maui
Now it’s time to kick your…
Hiney
Ever seen someone so…

Shiny
Soak it in ’cause it’s the last you’ll ever see
C’est la vie mon ami
I’m so…

Shiny
Now I’ll eat you, so prepare your final plea
Just for me
You’ll never be quite as…
Shiny
You wish you were nice and…
Shiny

Credit: Screen capture via YouTube / DisneyMusicVEVO

Owner of Dorothy's Ruby Slippers Finally Reunited With Stolen Hollywood Icons

Michael Shaw, the collector who lent his pair of Dorothy's Ruby Slippers to the Judy Garland Museum in August of 2005 only to be shocked by news of a brazen smash-and-grab one week later, was recently reunited with his treasured Hollywood memorabilia in a private ceremony at the scene of the crime.

“It’s like welcoming back an old friend I haven’t seen in years,” said a teary-eyed Shaw as he stood beside a display of the slippers, along with the federal agents and local authorities who spent almost two decades tracking down the Technicolor treasures featured in 1939’s beloved The Wizard of Oz.

Shaw, a former child actor, had acquired the slippers from Kent Warner, a Hollywood costumer who discovered them in an MGM warehouse shortly before the famous May 1970 auction that liquidated costumes and props from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Shaw told The Los Angeles Times in 1988 that when Warner brought him the ruby slippers, “I was so thrilled I literally started crying… I told him that if I never owned another possession, I’d be happy.”

Shaw eventually amassed an impressive collection of movie memories and traveled them around the country as part of a show called “Hollywood on Tour.” Shaw said last week that when people saw the slippers in person, “It was like they became 12 years old again.”

Just after the emotional reunion ceremony at Garland's restored birthplace home, Shaw surprisingly turned over the slippers to Heritage Auctions, which will spotlight them during an international tour — with stops in Los Angeles, New York, London and Tokyo — and then auction them some time in December.

“You cannot overstate the importance of Dorothy’s ruby slippers: They are the most important prop in Hollywood history,” said Heritage Auctions executive vice president Joe Maddalena.

Gilbert Adrian, the chief costume designer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, created the ruby slippers for Victor Fleming’s big-screen adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s children’s novel. (The magical slippers were silver in the book, but Adrian reinterpreted them as ruby because this was to be the first feature film shot in Technicolor).

Adrian had intended to use bugle beads to simulate ruby, but they proved to be too heavy. Instead, most of the bugle beads were replaced with sequins, 2,300 on each slipper. The butterfly-shaped bow on the front of each shoe features red bugle beads outlined in red glass rhinestones in silver settings.

Only four pairs of Ruby Slippers are known to have survived. One pair remains among the most popular attractions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.

Each of the pairs is believed to be worth about $3.5 million, according to federal prosecutors.

In 2005, the Judy Garland Museum borrowed Shaw’s Ruby Slippers for its annual Judy Garland Festival. It was to scheduled as a 10-week exhibition, but on August 28, 2005, someone slipped into the museum after hours, shattered the plexiglass case holding the slippers and stole them, leaving behind only a single red sequin.

“It’s the worst nightmare for me,” Shaw said at the time.

In July 2018, after Shaw and investigators feared the slippers had disappeared forever, the FBI and Grand Rapids Police Department recovered the pair during a sting operation.

In May 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Terry Martin for stealing “an object of cultural heritage” from the museum. Five months later, Martin pleaded guilty. Shortly before sentencing last month, Martin told the court he’d stolen the shoes because he thought the sequins were genuine rubies.

Unable to sell them on the black market, Martin said he ditched the slippers with someone who had recruited him for the job. Martin's accomplice was charged last week with theft of a major artwork and witness tampering.

According to Heritage Auctions, Dorothy's Ruby Slippers will once again dazzle and delight crowds around the world before stepping up to the auction block.

“This is a day that is years in the making, a real-life Hollywood ending,” Maddalena said. “It took an ensemble cast of law enforcement professionals giving the performance of a lifetime — and their coordination, cooperation and commitment restored the ruby slippers to their rightful owner. As we all look forward to the next chapter in their storied history… we are reminded of what these legendary objects are and what they represent: an iconic piece of our collective history, an enduring symbol of the magic of storytelling and an ever-shimmering reminder that dreams are best in Technicolor.”

Credits: Photos courtesy of Heritage Auctions / HA.com.

Nasa: 'Necklace Nebula' Formed When One Aging Star Engulfed Another

Fifteen-thousand light years away in the northern constellation of Sagitta (the Arrow), a pair of aging Sun-like stars orbited each other so closely that the larger of the two eventually completely engulfed the other.

Nasa scientists believe that the smaller star continued orbiting inside its dominant companion, increasing the giant’s rotation rate. The bloated companion star spun so fast that a large part of its gaseous envelope expanded into space.

Due to centrifugal force, most of the gas escaped along the star’s equator, producing bright diamond-like flashes that are actually clumps of dense gas that span 12 trillion miles.

The Hubble telescope captured a beautiful pic of what Nasa has nicknamed the "Necklace Nebula." The space agency shared the photo last week on its Hubble telescope Instagram page, here. As of Sunday night, the post titled "Happy #JewelDay!" has earned more than 84,000 Likes.

Nasa explained that the dominant star and its companion are only a few million miles apart, and appear in the photo as a single bright dot at the center of the formation. Radiating from the center, one can see the glow of oxygen (green), hydrogen (blue) and nitrogen (red).

Credit: Image courtesy of ESA/Hubble & NASA, K. Noll.

Music Friday: Thomas Dolby Sings, 'You Were a Shining Pearl in a Broken Shell'

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you wonderful tunes with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, the brainy British performer who blinded us with science in 1982, admits to being “Cruel” in a deeply personal song about an emotionally lopsided romance. Thomas Dolby, with a sweet assist from Eddi Reader, uses jewelry imagery to tell the story of a thoughtless boyfriend who refuses to change his ways.

He sings, “You were a shining pearl / In a broken shell / Under moonlight / And I was cruel.”

Dolby and Reader trade verses throughout the song, but join voices in a line about chasing false hope.

Together they sing, “But when my tears are washed away / You’ll still be blind / Skin-diving / For jewels.”

“Cruel” was released in 1992 as the second track from Dolby’s fourth studio album Astronauts & Heretics. Although the song failed to meet the commercial success of his biggest hit, “She Blinded Me With Science,” Dolby told PopMatters.com in 2008 that “Cruel” was one of three songs that best defined him as an artist.

When asked by PopMatters.com what he wanted to be remembered for, he answered, “My more obscure songs like ‘Screen Kiss,’ ‘I Love You Goodbye’ and ‘Cruel.’ I think it’s inevitable when you have hits as big as I had with 'She Blinded Me With Science' and 'Hyperactive,' that still get played on the radio 20 years later, people will tend to assume those songs define your music. But in my case, the music I really care most about is my quieter, more personal side.”

Thomas Morgan Robertson was born in London in 1958. The son of a distinguished professor of classical Greek art and archaeology, Dolby sang in a choir at age 11 and learned to sight-read music shortly thereafter. The artist’s stage name is a nod to Dolby noise-reduction cassettes. His schoolmates razzed him about the Dolby cassette player that he carried everywhere.

Dolby is primarily known for synth-pop, a subgenre of New Wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s. Dolby said he “got his hands on a kit-built synthesizer and never looked back.”

Early in his career, he promoted himself as a kind of musical mad scientist. Later on, he would become a technology entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.

He is currently the head of the Peabody Conservatory’s Music for New Media program at Johns Hopkins University. The four-time Grammy nominee will be touring this summer with appearances scheduled for Riverside, CA; Phoenix, AZ; Irving, TX; Houston, TX; Boston, MA; Atlantic City, NJ; Rochester Hills, MI; Cincinnati, OH; Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; and London, UK.

Please check out the audio track of Dolby and Welsh songstress Reader singing “Cruel.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along…

“Cruel”
Written by Thomas Dolby. Performed by Dolby, featuring Eddi Reader.

Cruel – what a thing to do
I’ve been cruel to you such a long time
And how can I hide my shame
‘Cause there I go again
At the wrong time

And I know that it was just the fear of flying
And I know it’s hard to keep myself from crying
But when my tears are washed away
You’ll still be blind
Skin-diving
For jewels

You were a shining pearl
In a broken shell
Under moonlight
And I was cruel

And I know that it was just the fear of flying
And I know it’s hard to keep myself from crying
But when my tears are washed away
You’ll still be blind
Skin-diving
For jewels

Cruel – I’ve been such a fool
And I’ll be missing you
Such a long time
I was cruel

Credit: Image by DavidWeesner, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Jewelers Mutual Offers Tips for Traveling Confidently With Fine Jewelry in Tow

With many of you starting to plan your summer vacations, it's important to take note of the best ways to safeguard your fine jewelry when traveling. The importance of getting this right can't be overstated. In a recent survey by Jewelers Mutual (JM), nearly all respondents admitted to bringing their treasured pieces with them on holiday, while a surprisingly large chunk also reported suffering a loss.

For many women, their engagement ring is, by far, the most expensive piece of jewelry they possess, yet a whopping 87% of respondents regularly travel with this precious keepsake.

The pleasure of wearing your best jewelry on holiday has to be weighed against the risks. The JM survey revealed that a whopping 35% of respondents reported losing jewelry away from home. (Hotel rooms emerged as the most common location for such misfortunes).

JM recommends balancing fashion options with the purpose of your trip. If you are going to a beachy resort, you may get away with a few pieces of casual jewelry or no jewelry at all. If you're traveling for work or attending a destination wedding, it's likely your better jewelry will be making the trip.

Says JM, be sure to take an inventory of the pieces you choose to bring for your records. Pack them securely in your carry-on bag and wear any jewelry that reasonably suits your traveling attire. For added security, avoid wearing overly flashy or expensive jewelry while traveling.

Make sure to keep the carry-on bag in your sight at all times. That includes offers of help from airport staff, cab drivers, bellhops and the like.

If you do decide to remove your jewelry for whatever reason, put it into your carry-on bag, not in a TSA bin or bowl.

Never, never, never pack your fine jewelry in checked luggage.

According to the JM survey, approximately 40% of respondents said they insure their travel jewelry. Yet, nearly half of these individuals rely on their homeowners' policies, which typically have lower, insufficient coverage limits for jewelry.

In fact, about 50% of travelers attested they were uncertain whether their insurance policies provided adequate coverage while traveling abroad.

Travelers with insurance were more likely to secure their jewelry in hotel safes and dedicated travel cases, while those without insurance tended to keep their jewelry close by during their travels, reported JM.

The JM study also revealed that younger adults are more likely to opt for specialized jewelry insurance, recognizing the unique advantages it offers in safeguarding their precious possessions beyond traditional homeowners' or renters' policies.

"Our goal is to educate and empower consumers to safeguard their jewelry so they can wear it without worry,” said Howard Stone, vice president of Global Risk Services and Analytics at Jewelers Mutual. “The insights gained from our latest study underscore the need for more informed decision-making when it comes to traveling with jewelry, and we are committed to being a trusted advisor for loss prevention education and helping consumers keep themselves and their jewelry safe."

The Jewelers Mutual study of 300 adults was conducted in August of 2023 by usertesting.com via an online survey.

Credit: Image by BigStockPhoto.com.