The Decline Of Western Movie Soundtracks
A while back we were talking about underrated movie soundtracks. That got my friend James, a reporter over in London, thinking about the decline of the great movie soundtrack. He's working on a freelance piece and would love the Stereogum readers' input. Here's what he sent me to pose to you:
Many of us own soundtracks such as The Blues Brothers, Pulp Fiction, Romeo + Juliet, Trainspotting, The Big Chill, Pretty in Pink, The Wedding Singer, Singles, Almost Famous, High Fidelity, and American Graffiti. In fact, almost every single soundtrack celebrated in the comments section of your blog are from the 90s.Thoughts?What's more, take a look at Amazon's current best-selling soundtracks. It's dominated by TV shows such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Grey's Anatomy. Recent movie soundtracks that sell well include Joaquin and Reese bleating away in Walk the Line, and Jack Johnson's aural ambien for Curious George.
So, besides Garden State and The Life Aquatic, where have all the great soundtracks gone? (And I mean soundtracks, not musical scores). Perhaps it's because there was a more coherent music scene in the 90s that was driven by a handful of influential magazines and MTV channels. That fostered all those popular soundtracks and experiments like Judgement Day. But, with countless blogs, zines, and radio and TV channels, today's music culture is more atomised.
Or perhaps it's because the album itself is a weaker concept. If so, it stands to reason that the soundtrack is too. Far easier to generate a soundtrack-buying audience through syndicated TV shows (which can use numerous songs over the course of a season) or sell them as gimmicks (e.g. Walk the Line). The only breakouts are directors who specialise in fusing music and images, such as (in the populist Western canon) Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and Cameron Crowe, or (beyond Hollywood) Wong Kar-Wai.
Most likely, though, the decline of the great movie soundtrack can be explained by the internet. That is, because music can be illegally ripped now, the excitement of watching a movie with an unreleased song, a bootleg, or an obscure cover -- and then buying the soundtrack to own the songs in question -- has gone forever.
Posted at 1:36 PM
Lost in Translation is the best soundtrack album I've ever heard.
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Blame the emo pop movement- look at the Spiderman and Superman soundtracks- terrible bands and music that is "inspired" by the movie not even included in it. It's all about marketing a Taking Back Sunday. Though I do like Motion City Soundtrack, is that bad?
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Def check out the slew of soundtracks from Wim Wenders' movies. Especially Until the end of the World... has everyone from lou reed, talking heads, to depeche mode and u2 are on that one.
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My first reaction is: Who cares? I don't think there was ever "the excitement of watching a movie with an unreleased song, etc." for me. I want to see a good movie, or I want to hear a good album. The soundtracks I bother listening to have been put together with a consistent viewpoint that suggests they're not a collection of vertically-integrated singles (e.g. the two Reznor soundtracks that came up).
The temptation to buy a CD for one good song -- I have the Sling Blade sndtrk for the Local H GBV cover -- is definitely gone b/c singles are so easily available on the net. But that just reflects the record industry's inability, now, to sell a whole bad CD based around one decent song. Singles collections still work -- those NOW! things still chart, don't they? -- but you want to sell an album, you put together a good album.
That's my first thought. My second is: Video game soundtracks are replacing movie soundtracks. Stubbs, etc. Those kids, these days.
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I think you're leaving out a lot of decent to really good soundtracks. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Oh Brother Where Art Thou!, Almost Famous, Elizabethtown, Rushmore, etc. There are still good soundtracks and most of them are to actual good movies. The problem is that so many bad movies are made with so many bad sountracks that it out weighs the good.
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Of recent vintage, is Jarmusch's soundtrack to Broken Flowers, some of the songs from soundtrack (the African jazz) are taken from the mix-CD that Murray carries with him like a talisman (he is exorcising his past after all).
Another somewhat recent movie (2002) made the soundtrack a key prop in the movie. Morvan Callar featured Aphex Twin, Can, VU, Hazelwood/Sinatra and was part of a mix-tape Morvan finds left behind by her dead boyfriend. Both recommended...
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so i married an axe murderer
jk
it was good for a couple of plays
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'Snatch' and 'Lock, stock and two smoking barrels' had great soundtracks, also 'Brown Bunny' was a great mix.
The problem is, soundtracks to movies won't really sell that well unless the music is made some kind of feature of in the movie and stands out (like in 'The life aquatic') or has an impact on a scene or has been given attention by someone that has some control over people's opinions.
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i still listen to the magnolia soundtrack on occassion with the music by aimee mann, but then again, I bought the so i married an axe murderer soundrack so there goes my cred
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virgin suicides
rules of attraction
boogie nights (or any pt anderson movie for that matter)
me myself and irene
me and you and everyone we know
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oh and
24hr party people
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Actually, blame Trainspotting for studios releasing such crap soundtracks since it was right about then that they figured out the marketing opportunities therein.
Plus, why did Human Traffic's soundtrack never see a stateside release, huh?
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Natural Born Killers. Wish Trent would do more soundtacks and less NIN.
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midnight cowboy is a pretty solid soundtrack. ok, so its pretty much just that one theme song by harry nielsen, but damn, that tune rules!
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midnight cowboy is a pretty solid soundtrack. ok, so its basically just that one theme song by harry nielsen, but damn, that tune rules!
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i think it's cuz the function of the soundtrack has changed. used to be that songs were matched up to circumstances and moods. maybe i'm totally naive but i feel like it was purer. now it seems that it's always about marketing. either the band brings some new cool cache to the movie or vice versa. Soulless product placement. And again, maybe Mike Nichols was trying to get rich when he called up Simon and Garfunkel. Maybe Hal Ashby wanted to fuck Cat Stevens little sister and maybe Elliott Smith was just an elaborate plot to upgrade Van Sant to Van Gogh. But I hope not. It was about the movie and the atmosphere. Now it's all Rogue Wavy bullshit that's thrown in so the director can moosh his stupid brooklyn head through the screen and wink like hey I know the Shins wanna suck my dick?
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Yeah, Jon Brion's work (I <3 Huckabees, Eternal Sunshine...) is another fine example of good sountracks in the last couple of years. It's not all scored either, Brion writes quite a few "pop" songs there too.
I kind of thought soundtracks have always sucked, so I really see no decline.
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The Big Lebowski soundtrack is a great one.
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City Of God.
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The Soundtrack to "The Devil's Rejects" is probably the best soundtrack in years IMO...and, while the soundtrack to Elizabethtown was great while the movie was on I found it to be lackluster without the movie.
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Okay, its not a movie, but Freaks and Geeks was not only one of the best shows on TV (so of course they cancelled it, the bastards), but its soundtrack was pretty damn awesome.
And 'About A Boy' and 'The Life Aquatic' soundtracks are good. Mostly indie movies have better soundtracks than major movies.
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I second both I <3 Huckabees by Jon Brion and About A Boy by Badly Drawn Boy, both films where the entire soundtrack is by a single artist.
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I'll second the Magnolia soundtrack. Also - Dead Presidents was a great soundtrack - Danny Elfman did it. If you want a good mix of James Brown, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, et al - it's totally worth checking out!
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Joe's Strummer's "Walker" soundtrack from 1987 is stunning.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009YNSE2/qid=1147980755/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-7968704-4389437?s=music&v=glance&n=5174
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Joe's Strummer's "Walker" soundtrack from 1987 is stunning. Also "the end of the world" soundtrack is quite good.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009YNSE2/qid=1147980755/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-7968704-4389437?s=music&v=glance&n=5174
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I was surprised that noone has mentioned the sdtrks to either Reality Bites or A Life Less Ordinary!
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I think the comments above that mention soundtracks from the 00's are good suggestions and largely blow away the premise that current soundtracks are worse than soundtracks of yesteryear.
One more to add to the list is the Kill Bill Vol. 1 soundtrack.
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i disagree completely that there's no more good sountracks anymore.
i think the real reason for this "lack of good sountracks" is that we're older now and don't care to buy a soundtrack with music we probably already have. when i was 14 i remember buying the x-files soundtrack for a new cure song. when i was 16 napster was out and i could download it. before napster, soundtracks were one way to discover new music, but which person reading stereogum really needs the garden state to learn about the f*cking shins?
i also think the trend in indie films has shifted slightly to use more ambient scores than sountrack cues; as songs often interrupt the flow of the film. still, indie films often have indie musicians do the soundtracks; as in pollard's score for bubble; or explosions in the sky scoring friday night lights.
however, mainstream shitty movies are jumping all over the success of the o.c.'s soundtrack. aside from garden state, there are many really bad movies with really good songs in them, including josh hartnett's wicker park and pretty much any teen comedy. i would go as far as to say that these movies have better soundtracks than movies of our childhoods -- its just that the films are less iconic than pulp fiction, romeo, or the crow.
but both generations of films have basically been co-opting alt or indie music to appear hip; so the only real difference to me is that the bands getting the money now probably could use it more than stone temple pilots did.
okay, i'm writing too much... just wanted to share my thoughts!
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the notion that the internet killed the movie star, er, soundtrack, is a little weak.
though already brought up above, it bears mentioning that the songs in 'O Brother Where Art Thou?' 'Magnolia' and 'About A Boy' were not only fantastic but uniquely integral; more than providing color or revealing shifts in mood, the music inspired the writing and at times, was part of the action onscreen, speaking through characters, even operating as a greek chorus in some instances.
when done right, the 'great movie sountrack' is still viable.
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Punch Drunk Love, another Jon Brion
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The death of the ultimate, completely relevant soundtrack has to do with the insane cost of the music rights.
As we've sailed into the mobile content era - the insane price tag on a truly good song makes it undesirable for most producers - hence the boom of people scoring films instead.
I totally 2nd the 24 party ppl addition, thnx julio.
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Jon Brion is pretty much a god when it comes to pop soundtracks.
Eternal Sunshine proves this.
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all of you...shut up.
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i always thought making soundtracks for films would be such an awesome job...especialy for a good movie. Larry Clark movies, although not always the best scripted or casted, are both musicaly and visualy satisfying. One of my favorite soundtracks was for a kids-esque movie called "hurricane streets", they have a cover of "staying alive" that i couldnt get enough of, the movie isnt great but for nostalgic purposes it always brings me back to my youngin' days when we "ran the streets". I think were reaching a point in film where there isnt much room for middle ground, if your making an "indie" flick you use "indie" music. If your making a "blockbuster" you use...well shitty/typical music.
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add danny boyle to that list of directors...every one of his movies have excellent soundtracks...even "the beach"
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While I agree with the observation that recent soundtracks aren't as good as some older ones, I tend to blame good old business for that fact instead.
People just realised that soundtracks sell well. And thus it often sounds like a soundtrack has been carefully 'crafted' by some record company marketing person making sure that one or two popular songs are in there (which will be played along with the closing credits for sure) and then compiling a soundtrack roughly along that style and forcing it on the film even when it shouldn't be there.
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I think the rise of independent films over the last however many years has brought, as many have suggested, the gap in quality between independent film soundtracks and mainstream movie soundtracks to become clear to us. Yes, some mainstream movies (ex. Wicker Park) have tried to have good soundtracks but the music can't save lackluster movies. Basically, I agree with everyone else who has said that there are still many great modern soundtracks, yet most of them belong to movies that were made by filmmakers who are just as creative as the musicians themselves; that's why we have such great soundtracks/scores for Paul Thomas Anderson films, Quentin Tarentino films, Wes Anderson films, etc. I like that the article pays respect to good movie soundtracks, but I think the writer should focus more on the value of good movie soundtracks. The filmmakers that I previously mentioned integrate quality music into their films...not just as a marketing ploy or a half-assed attempt to add "this is how you should feel during this scene" background music.
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Don't be a menace to south central while drinking your juice in the hood has a good soundtrack
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Kids buy soundtracks. We were kids in the 90s.
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What I think bears mentioning is that the concept of "the great soundtrack" has no set meaning - it varies from person to person, from ear to ear. One person's "great soundtrack" might be "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" or "The Breakfast Club," while another's might be the "Forrest Gump" soundtrack, because it serves the exact same purpose as the Time/Life "This is Rock and Roll" box set.
I actually think we're careening towards a new soundtrack age - with the digital age. As artists trend less and less towards making albums, and more and more towards making downloadable singles, all's it's gonna take is one visionary director to get a few awesome bands together and make a downloadable, meaningful, magnificent soundtrack.
And then the masses will follow.
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GARDEN STATE!
it wasn't bad right?
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thumbsucker
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captain eo
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THE SQUID & THE WHALE
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The Squid and the Whale had great music to go along with the movie. I don't usually buy soundtracks because most of the time it feels like a ploy...remember Footloose and Flashdance..those movies seemed to have major tie-ins with the music, not really crazy about that kinda music. I don't think the internet is killing soundtracks, it's that the industries don't know how to keep up with techonology and market stuff smart and tastefully. Some companies do, like Volkswagon, Apple, and so-on but like with larger movies I think they just want to push the hottest thing out there quickly to make a buck. I agree with what a lot of other people posted too and they probably articulated it better than me.
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i don't think your man has an article. There are great soundtracks that everyone's aware of (see above) and they really make the movies pop. People don't buy them because they don't buy music. It's that simple. The people who buy the NOW soundtracks are just pathological...stockholm syndrome from too much top 40.
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I think the premise of the argument is close...
What's right: Internet availability of songs makes folks less likely to buy soundtracks, as soundtracks are essentially mix-cd's that we're all making now anyay using leaked songs. Music fans are creating soundtracks to their lives every day, so the attraction isn't quite what it used to be.
However... there are still just as good, if not better, soundtracks out there nowawadays. Folks just don't buy 'em as much, so sales are lagging. But sales don't directly dictate what a great album is. A music supervisor like Randall Poster (Squid and the Whale, Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic, School of Rock, Kids, Velvet Goldmine, Rushmore, SubUrbia, A Life Less Ordinary, Jarhead, 28 Days, Boys Don't Cry, Jesus' Son ... the dude's walking billboard for great soundtracks) doesn't need album sales to tell him what makes a good soundtrack.
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Layer Cake. Great movie, great soundtrack...
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Pump Up The Volume also had a great soundtrack from way back.
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Pulp Fiction's soundtrack would have to be the best, though all of Quentin Tarantino's film soundtracks have been good really (not sure about Jackie Brown). 28 Days Later had a few good songs, and I actually didn't mind the Spiderman 2 "inspired by..." soundtrack.
http://www.musictimes.com.au
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It's complicated, and moreso than we're letting on.
1) Once the idea of the soundtrack as a successful item came into play (mid-90s), labels starting using them essentially as label samplers. The concept of them being movie tie-ins disappeared. The moviemakers get a couple of picks, the rest get filled by the label.
2) The best soundtracks consist of a-side material. In the "label sampler" era, you get some no-name band's best song, and a bunch of cast-off b-sides from the bands you've heard of.
3) The advent of soundtracks that include songs that *aren't even in the movie*. And the second release, featuring songs "inspired" by the movie. All just insipid attempts to cash in on a movie's popularity.
4) Soundtracks like The Big Chill can't happen now. When that album came out, radio generally didn't play that many "old" songs. The soundtrack to Stand by Me was successful (and put the title song back in the top ten) because those songs hadn't been heard in years and were newly exposed to a younger audience. Today, all of those "classic" songs are recycled over and over again on stations nationwide. Top 40 today would never touch a twenty-five-year-old song in the same way that they did with "Stand by Me" in 1986.
5) The dearth of current movies that use music as more than just background noise. People ran out and bought the Pulp Fiction soundtrack because the songs were instantly reminiscent of the movie. Apart from the mentioned examples, there haven't been many movies like that lately. (Though credit to Cameron Crowe for trying to salvage the concept.)
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i know that garden state and life aquatic were the two "exceptions" to the argument, but i think that those two are proof that the possibility for a great movie soundtrack still exists. both are excellent soundtracks with hard-to-get stuff on 'em (the iron and wine cover on garden state, the seu jorge stuff on life aquatic). The atmosphere still exists for good movie soundtracks.
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correct me if someone has already noticed this, but when your guy is referencing "Judgement Day" as a soundtrack experiment, does he not mean "Judgement Night"? Isn't that the soundtrack where they mixed Slayer with Ice-T and other metal/rap concoctions?
I thought maybe he was talking about T2: Judgement Day, but other than that juddering "DUH! DUHDUHDUH DUH!" motif, I can't remember anything about that soundtrack. Like, at all.
Boy, I'm a nerd.
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The LABELS ruined sountracks when they figured out they could foist 3 sh*tty bands on there for every one decent artist of theirs' they let you use in the film. (Then by the late 90s it'd become a competition among "music consultants" [like Nic fcking Harcourt] to plunder every cool underground tune in history, regardless of its' relationship to the film.)
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i totally second 'movern caller' for the 00s
'basquiat' for the 90s
'repo man' for the 80s
or stewart copeland's original music for 'rumblefish'
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How about "Divine Intervention" (from palestinian director Elia Suleiman)?
Maybe it is not that well known in the US...
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40 year old Virgin had an excellent soundtrack
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Everything is Illuminated
Wicker Park
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Oh god, the Garden State soundtrack was BS. Dannyboy's comment on here was spot on. You know, Garden State the movie come to think of it sucked too.
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Soundtrack to the Newton Boys, scored by Danny Barnes and the Bad Livers. Patty Griffin, Abra Moore, "Right or Wrong," etc. Just make sure to skip the Ethan Hawke track.
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i wonder to what extent this isn't an issue of creative control being increasingly wrested from directors by studios. i imagine there would be 'better' soundtracks (although we haven't defined what that means exactly) if directors had more freedom throughout the entire filmmaking process. instead, i suspect with a lot of big-budget films, the director's role is really limited to merely guiding the creative side of the production process (and no, this isn't all big-budget films, but a lot). conversely, indepenent films enable more creativity on all fronts, and so the director is more free to consider the songs used. no idea really... just a thought.
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Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. Easily the best soundtrack of all time.
God gave rock n' roll to ya!
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Haha, Zack. I fully support the Bill and Ted soundtracks, both Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey.
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If you think that soundtracks are dead I have only two words for you.
Team America.
It's worth it for just for America, Fuck Yeah!
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"joaquin and reese bleating away"...oh, god, i haven't laughed so hard in a while.
this is so boresville, but i really love the soundtrack to "howard's end". zzz, zzz, zzzzzz.
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oh...soundTRACKs, not scores...
hmmm...Dumb and Dumber (the funny one) and The Squid & The Whale.
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i think in the 90s it seemed that music had more of an attachment to the film. it seemed music was used to make a scene more explosive as now it seems its background or marketing related. there was a time though that you could only get certain songs through buying soundtracks as now with the internet it is not so. i myself buy more scores to films than soundtracks, because its the composers full intention to add to a director's scene in a film. i believe the last soundtrack i picked up that was amazing was "lost in translation" because the music is so instrumental in the film,but music is always important with sofia's work. i think if you watch friday night lights without explosions in the sky its just another football movie. they are an instrumental post rock band so there is definately gray area whether their presence is more score than soundtrack. if anyone knows the french director yvan attal, music in his films is paramount as well. his last film "ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants" utilizes quite a bit of radiohead. in one scene alone a whole song is used to portray the dialog. great film. i think i am starting to write a novel here, but i think most can agree soundtracks have taken backseat whether its the internet, poor movies yeilding poor music selections, or bad marketing being the culprit.
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This thread may already be dead, but I'm going to concur with the comment about video game soundtracks becoming the new movie soundtracks. Grand Theft Auto and Tony Hawk are the new tastemakers; at least, I've seen them turn people onto new music.
Of course, that just means the death of 8-bit compostions (and I still want the Super Mario Brothers theme on CD...)
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I'd hate to self-promote, but I just wrote an article responding to this one, which I completely disagree with.
http://mockingmusic.blogspot.com/2006/05/settling-score.html
Enjoy.
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Great old-school AM country (and pop) on the soundtrack of Clint Eastwood's "A Perfect World." And two ace Chris Isaak covers (including Johnny Ray's "The Little White Cloud That Cried"). Totally underrated movie, too.
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I read Stereogum every day but have never been moved to post a comment. Well today is the day where that changes. Three great movie soundtracks, all from a while back:
1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (worth it for South American Getaway alone);
2. Kes (evocative and perfectly capturing an identity of the English countryside); and
3. Any of Ennio Morricone spaghetti western stuff, but particularly How the West Was Won.
None of these are really that poppy but they're all brilliant as a supplementary mood capturer.
Finally, the Tarantino soundtracks were great because, well at least for me, they were breathing life into old songs which wouldn't have made it on to people's radars. I'd never heard of most of the songs and they were all great, and fit the movies scenes of course.
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Finally! Ennio Morricone. Granted - dude's from a ways back. I'm not sure when his latest work came out. But the Crime and Dissonance collection that just came out suggests he still retains some pretty serious cultural currency. I'm a sucker for his spaghetti western stuff, too, but I also love his work for Battle of Algiers. Basically, Morricone wrote music according to the movie in question. The idea of picking and choosing songs and applying them to movies began - am I correct? I could be wrong - with The Graduate, more or less. Right about when Morricone was reaching his height himself. So those seem like the two threads to me: the application of pre-existing or constructed singles (S&G), and an attention to atmospheric instrumentals (Morricone).
Anyway. Morricone rules! Also, this Italian girl I know met him in a hotel. So there.
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Mean Streets...c'mon think about it...
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There are several soundtracks or collections that are selected by John Waters culled from his movies that are just so much fun!!
Personally, as the queen of the soundtracks, I would have to say that "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" was awesome; and if you have a problem with it, go ahead and throw your tomatoes, I'll make a salad out of them.
Kudos for listing Ennio Morricone, but what about the work of Lalo Schifirin and the music from Bullitt!!
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Royalty Free Beats For One Dollar
At
http://upbeat.tk
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Many recent sound tracks add little value to the movie. They are no longer an integral part of the story telling mechanism - as compared to most older movies. Apparently movie goers don't care, so why should the director care? I have the feeling that most of the contributors here don't care whether the sound they hear in a movie seems to convey an emotional content or not... so... what difference does it make so long as people buy or play it? Most of my sound tracks are on 331/3 platters - just to give you some idea of when I stopped caring about sound tracks. Although, come to think of it, I do have several Vangelis sound track CD's.
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