Cinema Hype

I just added a movie soundtrack to my iTunes.

I know what you’re going to ask: Away We Go, or (500) Days of Summer? If I were you, I’d think the same thing. An awful lot of people that like the same things I like are celebrating the summer of 2009 and the rise of the hipster romance by discovering Alexi Murdoch and rediscovering The Smiths, and with good reason. Good guess.

So I won’t be offended if you smirk a little when I tell you what I’m really bopping along to these days: Hairspray. Not even the original; the re-make. I love it, you guys. I’ve had “Without Love” and “You Can’t Stop the Beat” and (randomly) “Ladies’ Choice” for a long time; somehow, I thought that I didn’t need the whole thing. And oh, was I wrong. You think you don’t need Christopher Walken singing “You’re Timeless to Me,” but you do. You think Elijah Kelley on “Run and Tell That” isn’t totally necessary in your life, but you’re wrong. And by you, I mean me.

Movie soundtracks are like that, though. They’re eclectic; they’re just as likely to be riddled with bad (or at least not-great) songs as they are to be good to the last drop—as with (500) Days of Summer, where you can get Regina Spektor’s “Us” if you also want Hall and Oates’s “You Make My Dreams Come True” to spring up every time you use the Shuffle function. Or, if they’re tied immediately to the story (as in a musical), they can be extremely specific—good background for a fictional life, maybe, but not so much for a real one. Soundtracks, ironically, sometimes don’t make the best background music.

On the other hand, when they’re good, they can be great, and for many of the same reasons that they’re not great. They’re eclectic; they introduce us to artists we would never have heard otherwise. And they’re specific: they’re a little reminder, over and over again, of the time we went to see that movie, and we felt just the way the songs make us feel, and we liked it enough that we wanted to hear that experience over and over again.

So, readers, what’s your favorite movie soundtrack, and why?

movie soundtracks, (500) Days of Summer, 500 Days of Summer, Away We Go, Hairspray, Christopher Walken, Elijah Kelley, Hall and Oates, You Make My Dreams Come True, Regina Spektor, Us

If you’re in charge of the soundtrack for 500 Days of Summer, you’d better make it good. Because, for one, the main characters meet in an elevator and talk about the Smiths (this is closely related to my own dream of meeting my perfect man at the public library, when we both want to read the only copy of The New Yorker; he compromises and takes Vanity Fair instead, because he’s nice). Plus, the female lead is Zooey Deschanel, who is no slouch, musically–she’s the “she” half of She & Him and also supports M. Ward on his own records. In a pinch, Deschanel could even call in her own fiance, the king of the heartfelt 21st-century hipster love song, Postal Service/Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard. I bet he could come up with a killer sountrack, stat.

I’m just saying: start with these ingredients, and people are going to expect something good. Here’s the track listing, with samples from Youtube (of varying visual quality, but they all sound fine), where available, for your listening pleasure:

1. A Story of Boy Meets Girl - Mychael Danna and Rob Simonsen
2. Us - Regina Spektor
3. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths
4. Bad Kids - Black Lips
5. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths
6. There Goes The Fear - Doves
7. You Make My Dreams - Hall & Oates
8. Sweet Disposition - The Temper Trap
9. Quelqu’un M’a Dit - Carla Bruni
10. Mushaboom - Feist
11. Hero - Regina Spektor
12. Bookends - Simon & Garfunkel
13. Vagabond - Wolfmother
14. She’s Got You High - Mumm-Ra
15. Here Comes Your Man - Meaghan Smith
16. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - She & Him

It’s a good soundtrack–deliberately and pleasantly eclectic, roughly devided between rock, midtempo indie pop, and the kind of miscellaneous, familiar-ish older music that comes with cultural baggage intact. It’s not too studied in its indie-ness, but exposes a few lesser-known bands; it rocks out, but shouldn’t put too many people off; it’s a little bit retro, but in a good way. It’s good summer music. And, interestingly, it would be an excellent companion album to another strong summer soundtrack, Alexi Murdoch’s work on for Away We Go.

If nothing else, there’s that cover of “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” to look forward to.

Oh, and, uh, the movie. That, too.

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