Wednesday 22 April 2009

For the Love of a Soundtrack


I'm a soundtrack lover.  Of all the albums on my play list its the soundtracks that I like the most.  I love the way that they take me on a journey in a way that your average album does not and I also love that they often introduce me to music I would never usually listen to.  So I decided that I would post my favourite soundtracks, the ones that really cover both of the above points. (in no particular order)

1. Dusk Till Dawn - what I love about this is that there are so many artists that I would never listen to if it wasn't for the way they fit within this album, ZZ Top being the most obvious, with Jon Wayne singing Texas Funeral (not the actor) not far behind.

2. The Blues Brothers - come on its a classic, you've got Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown and the Blues Brothers all in one album, plus Cab Calloway singing 'Minnie the Moocher' what's not to love !!!

3. A Life Less Ordinary - Surprised?? I know I was but as I was listening I realised that out of all of them this soundtrack really takes me through a journey, the soundtrack is the same as the film, its quirky, dark and doesn't fit together quiet right and that's what makes it so good.

4. O Brother Where Art Thou - For someone who would say they are not that fond of Country music and is an atheist it might surprise you that this makes it on my list, but I love the Blues and Gospel so really its fits in pretty well, plus 3 of the songs from this soundtrack are lullaby's that I sing my boys so it holds a special place in my heart.

5.  Pulp Fiction - The best thing about this album is the way they jog your memory of the placement of the song within the movie by adding some of the best quotes, plus the music is pretty cool; Al Green - Lets Stay Together, and Maria McKee - If Love is a Red Dress (Hang me in Rags) are two of my favourites.

6. Empire Records - This is one of my favourites, not entirely sure that its not mostly because I want to work in that record shop but either way I do think that its a great soundtrack, the only let downs were that it wasn't the movie version of the song 'Sugarhigh' that has Renee Zellweger singing on the rooftop and it is also missing the Flying Lizards version of 'Money' originally by the Beatles.

7. Reality Bites - Speaks for its self really, it was probably one of the first times I watched a movie and thought wow I have to have that soundtrack.  The classic being 'My Sharona' which brings back memories of them all dancing in the service station, and then there is U2, Ethan Hawke, Lenny Kravitz, and a lot of other great artists.

8.  Tank Girl - This is up there as one of my top 3.  Its got Bjork, Devo, Ice-T and Portishead just for starters and the Joan Jett and Paul Westerberg version of  'Lets Do It (lets Fall In Love)' is brilliant.

9.  The Crow - Its an amazing soundtrack, the music is generally a bit heavy but then the movie was so dark that of course the music has to be.  The mixture of Stone Temple Pilots, Pantera and Jane Siberry is a fantastic mood creator plus who wouldn't love The Cure - Burn

10.  Reservoir Dogs - Full of great music and some very memorable quotes this definitely deserves a place in the top 10.

And the supplementary is;

Juno - Its a lovely soundtrack with some beautiful songs its also quirky like the movie, my personal favourite is Cat Power - Sea of love, made even more memorable by the scene that the song appears in.

3 comments:

Catriona said...

See, isn't that interesting? I do have the Reality Bites soundtrack, but rarely listen to it now, because I don't want to be reminded of the film, which I hate with a deep and fiery passion. Ditto the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, though I don't hate that film--I am simply very, very bored by it (though less bored, I admit, than I have been by everything that Tarantino has made subsequently. Kill Bill nearly put me in a coma).

I do, though, deeply love the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack (I'd have called it rockabilly and folk, rather than gospel, but they're all drinking out of the same pool) and The Crow soundtrack.

(Don't have Blues Brothers, oddly--but I have most of the artists on difference albums, so it kind of balances out.)

Buffy Stun-Hers said...

Lol, no matter what facebook says we are pretty different, i have great teenage memories about Reality Bites and I still feel 17 when i watch it. Pulp Fiction as a movie is Ok but a lot of the soundtrack i think is a really interesting mix of songs.

I agree that OBWAT is quiet rockabilly (which sits on the edge of country) but there are a few gospel songs like 'Fly Away" "Down to the River", aunty Naida sings them in church so I think that its got to be classified as Gospel. You have to fix the Blues Brothers gap in your collection, well if you like the movie because really the best bits are the actual blues brothers music.

Catriona said...

You're absolutely right: I've apparently been defining "gospel" too narrowly my entire life. But now I know there's such a thing as "rockabilly gospel," that's what I'm going to call this.

(Though, thinking about this, I do still wonder how you draw a distinction between gospel and hymns. I mean, they're not the same. So what's gospel and what's a hymn, if we don't limit gospel to Southern African-American churches--which it seems we don't?)

The rockabilly comment wasn't supposed to contradict your definition of the music as "country"--rockabilly and bluegrass are totally country. I was trying to draw a distinction between the type of country I don't like (Garth Brooks-style mainstream stuff) and country that I quite like, which is that fringy rockabilly and bluegrass stuff, the music that sort of (as you point out) straddles country and blues.

I don't know what's wrong with my expression today. Honestly!

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