We all love soundtracks, right? Weird and cool needle drops that help create an atmosphere or illuminate a theme or just go really well with the action of the plot. I get a little annoyed by the ridiculous amount of song snippets creators today tend to put in their shows, but I still like a good soundtrack. So that’s the Question this week: What’s your favorite?
I must say, while I don’t want to limit your answers, I limited mine. I didn’t consider movies (and I only considered movies; television shows, to me, don’t really have “soundtracks,” because they run so long, which is not to say I don’t love a good theme song or want to limit you if your favorite is a television show) where everything is sung — my absolute favorite soundtrack of all time if I considered this is the score to Jesus Christ Superstar. I mean, come on:
A movie like that is in the subset of just straight musicals, which I also didn’t consider. I mean, I like The Music Man and The Sound of Music as much as the next guy, but I don’t really think of those as “soundtracks.” They’re just sung dialogue. Grease would probably be my favorite, mostly because of that killer theme song:
No, when I think of “soundtrack,” I think of a regular, spoken-word movie with music in the background. Sometimes the characters can hear the music, most of the time they cannot. If you want to include musicals in your consideration, feel free — I have no problem with that. I just think of them a bit differently.
This is difficult for me, because I like so many soundtracks. When I thought of this question, my mind went immediately to Pump Up the Volume, the 1990 film in which Christian Slater plays a high school underground DJ, just because music is such a bit part of the movie. While I like the soundtrack, I don’t love it, and I moved on. John Hughes always had some good soundtracks, and the one for Some Kind of Wonderful is pretty good, mainly because of the cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Lick the Tins which plays over the closing credits:
Obviously, movies about singers will probably have good soundtracks, so I thought of Almost Famous, but had to move on from that, too, because I don’t think it’s that memorable (you may disagree). I don’t see as many new movies as I used to, so anything recent was out. What to do, what to do!
Finally, I narrowed it down to a few. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? has a killer soundtrack. It’s a bit too close to an actual musical for me, though.
I really like The Crow‘s soundtrack, even though it’s so very gloomy:
One of my favorite underrated movies is Hardware, which has some excellent songs on the soundtrack, but they’re not original, so I don’t think I can count them:
I have the same issue with Magnolia, which also has a great soundtrack. Aimee Man wrote some songs for the movie, but some were older. It doesn’t disqualify it in my mind, but it is a ding against it. Still, this is a superb scene:
My favorite soundtrack, though, is the one for Singles. It hit at a time when grunge was huge (people said Crowe was cashing in on the trend, but he filmed it before grunge blew up, so he was just ahead of things) and when I was really into that style of music (I still am, to a degree, but back then, when I was 21, I was really into it), and the soundtrack just slaps hard. Not all the songs are original, but enough are, and the ones that aren’t are pretty damned awesome (Crowe gets points from me for using “Crown of Thorns” by Mother Love Bone, which is an amazing song). The two bookends of the album are probably the best originals: “Would?” by Alice in Chains and “Drown” by Smashing Pumpkins (which isn’t original for the soundtrack, but it’s the first time the band recorded it).
So that’s my answer. Was this an excuse to post a lot of nifty songs? Well, sure, but I’m still interested in your answers! Will you guys probably come up with ones that I’ll say, “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that one”? Of course — that’s part of the fun of these Questions! Thanks for participating, everyone!
