I saw this article on the NY Times about the Juno soundtrack (that Kimya Dawson is a scary looking chick), and I was thinking about how many soundtracks over the course of my life have really kicked ass. Sometimes you have to buy them, but sometimes they're great just in the course of the movie itself.
One of the earliest I can remember was one of my first cassette tapes: Beverly Hills Cop 2. Hopelessly 80's, sure, but a good collection of bad pop songs at least. I had Top Gun on vinyl as well.
Much later, one of the most dominant in my memory, came Singles, which is without question a perfect snapshot of rock music in 1993, at the height of grunge. That's one of the most fantastic fucking albums I've ever owned, and I'm amazed at how I can play it now and it still holds up. It has a couple of Paul Westerberg songs, and "Drown" by Smashing Pumpkins, which has four glorious minutes of feedback and noise. (Also the year the Pumpkins' Siamese Dream came out, which is one of my favorite albums of all time. Check out the track "Soma.")
There have been some other great soundtracks lately, most recently for The Last Kiss, which has amazing music on it. Zack Braff produced it, and was behind Garden State too. The guy has good taste in music.
You know, I subconsciously think about how much it annoys me that I couldn't just put whatever music I wanted to in my own future film. Cameron Crowe (director of Singles, as well as Elizabethtown and Jerry McGuire) said somewhere that music is critical to setting tone and making a movie a movie. I totally agree with him.
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