On Movie Soundtracks that Don’t Suck

A few months back, a couple of things happened over the course of a week.

The first was a post about September’s month in theaters that had a comment thread talking about movie soundtracks and, specifically, the movie soundtrack to The Lost Boys.

That soundtrack was in everybody’s car and everybody’s Walkman. And I went back and revisited the soundtrack and realized that the soundtrack kinda sucks. As I said then:

We had no idea what we were doing with non-orchestral soundtracks.

I mean, seriously… look at this:

INXS
Lou Gramm
ELTON FREAKING JOHN as covered by ROGER FREAKING DALTREY
THE FREAKING DOORS as covered by… okay, fine. Echo and the Bunnymen. Half a point for this one.
The Cry Little Sister song. Full point. This one is good.
Power Play? This is a lounge song. What the hell?
Timmy Capello. The sexy sax man. I don’t even know how to judge this one. It’s either a full point or it’s a minus point. I don’t know.
Mummy Calls. Beauty has her way? I have no memory of this song. It’s not bad? The lyrics are good. The song itself kinda sucks. But, yeah, I could see how someone who doesn’t believe in subtext might think this song belonged on the soundtrack over the objections of the guy who said “Let’s have Roger Daltrey cover the Elton John song about sunsets!” Half a point.
To the Shock of Miss Louise… I don’t remember this song either. No lyrics, I guess. I must have fast forwarded it every time. It actually fits, though. Maybe a quarter point.

See? No idea what they were doing.

The Cry Little Sister song was good.

Then, about a week later, there were memes flying about incorporating one of Jordan Peterson’s tweets and I figured that I’d throw my hat into the ring:

OH EM GEE!!! pic.twitter.com/WD3moca2VW

— Jaybird (@OG_Jaybird) October 26, 2023

And I went back and looked at the Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey soundtrack and, holy cow, it’s *REALLY* good. And it still holds up!

Now, I’ll grant, it has a *HUGE* emphasis on “what it is” rather than “what it is not” and so you’re going to be getting hair bands, hair bands, and more hair bands. It is true that Slaughter and Winger both appear on there. But so do Faith No More, King’s X, and Megadeth. And, you know what? If you don’t have a bunch of people yelling “MEGADETH IS BETTER THAN WINGER” in your ear, Slaughter and Winger can be kinda fun. Even if Megadeth is better than Winger.

And I’d go through the soundtrack and hold it up to the theme of the movie but… every single song would get a “this song is pretty good and it fits the movie” or a “this song is really good and it fits the movie” with a special shout-out to Primus and Tommy the Cat.

Marchmaine mentioned the soundtrack to “Pretty in Pink” as giving moviemakers a false idea of how easy it would be to just throw together some already-recorded songs and call it a soundtrack (which, as soundtracks go, was pretty darn good if you ask me… most folks wouldn’t have heard of half of these bands and the music guy did a good job of picking songs from the top third of the bands’ discographies).

And so, since then, I’ve been thinking about movie soundtracks every other day for 3 months.

The best Orchestral ones are pretty easy. Just pick something that John Williams is attached to and you’ll have about a kabillion of them. Holy cow, he did Poseidon Adventure? *AND* Towering Inferno? I mean, I knew about the heaviest hitters (Star Wars, Superman, E.T, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List) but he did Home Alone? HE DID HARRY POTTER?!?

Dang, you almost have to say “pick an orchestral one but NOT JOHN WILLIAMS” at that point.

Hellraiser’s was pretty good. The Social Network if you want something more modern.

So… what soundtracks have been stuck in your craw?