Just over a couple of weeks ago I gave a sneak preview into my new “Best albums” series and provided a handful of ‘honourable mentions’ just to whet your appetite. If you missed that post, go on back and check it out. I’ll wait. If you’ve already perused that piece, you’d know that I am (or at least I was) almost as big a fan of films as I am of music.
What I didn’t mention two weeks ago is that I’ve never been a huge collector of film soundtracks. No. As much as I appreciate how the choice of music can elevate a film immeasurably, how much I enjoy well placed songs and picking and pointing them out when I recognize them, it’s a rare thing for me to want to sit down and listen to film soundtrack more than just the one time. The albums in this list will represent the exceptions to the rule. These are soundtracks that are not just great accompaniments to the films for which they were compiled but are also great listens in their own right. In some cases, they perfectly evoke the feeling of the films and remind of particular scenes. In others, the compilations stand on their own, even transcending the films to become a cultural phenomenon.
In today’s post, I’ll share albums ten through six of my list of ten favourite film soundtracks. Then, I’ll share the top five, giving each their due in their own post, over the next month or so, interspersed with the other lists that I’ve got on the go. As always, I welcome your comments and perhaps your own favourite soundtracks as we go.
Let’s start.
Sofia Coppola often used indie music to great effect in her films, especially in her early work. Her third feature length film was a biography on Marie Antoinette, beginning with her being married off to the dauphin of France and ending at the eruption of the French Revolution. If you put on the soundtrack without context, you likely wouldn’t guess the story it was meant to help tell, but accompanying the highly stylized film, it was perfect. Mostly pulled from the original wave of post punk and new wave of the 80s, which was seeing a resurgence in indie rock during the time that the film was released. Great tunes by Siouxsie and the Banshees, New Order, The Cure, and a well-placed “I want candy” by Bow Wow Wow, but the real treat was two tracks by newer indie rockers The Radio Dept., who I was just falling in love with at the time.
A retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma, disguised as a teen rom-com, set in Beverley Hills? AS IF! It starred a very young Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd in their earliest film roles, was mildly successful in the theatres but gained traction on video, and has become something of a cult classic. Of course, in the 90s, when alt rock was king, film soundtracks had a habit of playing like a mixed tape of the hottest things or the about-to-be hottest things. “Clueless” had to be hip to be a hit with the teen audience it was targeting and it didn’t fail. It starts with some interesting covers by The Muffs (Kim Wilde), Cracker (Flamin’ Groovies), and Counting Crows (Psychedelic Furs) and rounds things out with some hit Britpop (Radiohead, Lightning Seeds, Supergrass), my favourite Bosstones track, and introduced me to The Smoking Popes.
“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.” I remember being super hyped when I first heard that “Fear & loathing”, one of my favourite books at the time, was being adapted for the screen by Terry Gilliam and would star Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro in the principal roles. I went to see it in the theatre with my friend Crissy at the Promenade Mall north of Toronto and we howled all the way through, even as the half-empty theatre drained by half that, even before the quarter mark of the film. The soundtrack features psychedelic rock of 60s, notably, Jefferson Airplane’s “White rabbit” which features prominently in a particular scene in the book, as well as Vegas residency crooners (like Tom Jones and Perry Como). Dialogue bits by Depp and Del Toro lead into most of the tracks and are interspersed between them, as if Depp is narrating the soundtrack as he does the film. A drug fuelled trip chasing the American dream.
Back at the end of the 90s, Tom Cruise convinced Cameron Crowe (who he had worked with on “Jerry Maguire”) to remake Spanish-language film “Abre los ojos”. I went to see it in the theatre, not for Cruise, but because I’d always admired Crowe’s work. I remember enjoying it at the time but remember very little of the film, save for its surreal quality and how it was left open to the audiences’ interpretation as to what was real and what was not. Of course, Crowe’s soundtrack contributes to the dreaminess of it all. On paper it might seem eclectic, ranging from R.E.M. to Bob Dylan to The Monkees and Peter Gabriel, but collected together, it’s a beautiful thing. Indeed, this soundtrack completely changed my outlook on “Solsbury hill” and “Sweetness follows” and it also introduced me to Iceland ambient rock band Sigur Rós. Lovely stuff.
“This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know upfront that this is not a love story.” “(500) days of summer” is an indie non-romantic comedy that stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and indie it-girl Zooey Deschanel as its two principals. Their story was not straightforward but it was bound to end in heartbreak. Of course, it was. It had its start in a shared love of The Smiths. In a film where the music was almost a third piece in a love triangle, an integral character, the soundtrack would without a doubt be something special. It plays like a mixed tape put together by Tom and Summer from their collective collections, featuring Doves, Black Lips, Hall & Oates (!), Feist, Regina Spector, Simon & Garfunkel, and unsurprisingly, The Smiths. And if you get the deluxe editions, you get the songs performed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Pixies’ “Here comes your man”) and Zooey Deschanel (Nancy Sinatra’s “Sugar town”) during the karaoke scene. Definitely a compilation as fun as the film it accompanies.
Stay tuned for album #5 on this list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.
21 (2008): A slick and hip, indie-heavy soundtrack that perhaps even out-hipped the slick, heist film that was based upon but over-sensationalized real events.
Forrest Gump (1994): A double album of strictly American musical artists that reflect and embody the three decades – from the 50s to the 80s – that we experience of Forrest Gump’s remarkable life.
Stand by me (1986): Music from the 1980s film based on the Stephen King novella “The body” perfectly evokes being a teenager with your friends on an adventure at the end of summer in 1959*.
My (life in) music lists 