January 7th, 2008
13. Wang Chung, To Live And Die In L.A. (1985)
William Friedkin's Oscar-winning classic The French Connection brought documentary-style realism to the American crime-movie procedural, evoking the gritty streets of New York City with handheld camerawork and authentically unsavory characters on both sides of the law. For his unofficial sequel, To Live And Die In L.A., Friedkin similarly captured a specific time and place by embracing the glitz and artifice of Southern California with the same vigor he brought to the sleaze and grime of early-'70s Brooklyn. Complementing the film's air of misplaced morality and detached debauchery is the atmospherically poppy score by Wang Chung, a synth group whose legacy will forever be tied to that "Everybody Wang Chung tonight!" song. The songs today sound hopelessly dated, but this actually plays to the film's benefit: To Live And Die In L.A. is unmistakably an '80s movie, with an insatiable need for "More! Now!" motivating the villains as well as the heroes. And what's a better soundtrack for that than a bunch of really catchy pop songs promising instant gratification?
14. Badly Drawn Boy, About A Boy (2002)
One of the knocks on Badly Drawn Boy (Damon Gough) is that his albums are long on musical ideas and short on cohesion, which may be why Gough's soundtrack for the Nick Hornby adaptation About A Boy ranks among his best work. Given the assignment to write songs and instrumental bridges around a single subject, Gough keyed into the mind of a sweet, precocious, outcast kid with no friends, an overbearing mother, and a general obliviousness to the things other teenagers find important. The result is bright and winning, from the charmingly buoyant "Something To Talk About" to deeper tracks like "Silent Sigh," which floats on a Peanuts-esque melancholy piano line, and "A Minor Incident," a direct, moving appeal from a boy to his screwed-up mom. Like the best entries on this list, the soundtrack is sewn into the movie's fabric, and it tells a story in itself.
15. Elliott Smith, Good Will Hunting (1997)
Danny Elfman provides much of the background music for Gus Van Sant's crossover hit (a.k.a. the film that launched Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), but Van Sant's Portland pal Elliott Smith dominates the emotional foreground. Key transitional scenes play to some of Smith's most resonant songs: "No Name #3," "Angeles," and "Say Yes" are allowed to stretch out, rather than be completely truncated. Then there's "Miss Misery," which netted Smith an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song—it plays over the big reveal and end credits, lending the whole enterprise an air of respectability. As for the movie itself, sure, it's a little hokey and filled with Robin Williams, but it's still a hundred times more resonant than Jersey Girl.
16. The Polyphonic Spree, Thumbsucker (2005)
When director Mike Mills wanted music for his debut Thumbsucker, he had two things in mind: Harold & Maude and Elliott Smith. Smith was to be to Thumbsucker what Cat Stevens was to Harold & Maude: the sole songwriter to propel the film forward with folk-based pop songs. Mills showed him an early cut, and Smith began working on music, even covering Stevens' "Trouble." After Smith's death in 2003, Mills ended up working with Tim DeLaughter and his band The Polyphonic Spree. It isn't hard to imagine what a full soundtrack of Smith tunes would have done to the mood of this film (Smith's version of "Trouble" is prominently placed), but The Polyphonic Spree's choral pop works well with the hazy malaise and suburban yearning of Mills' coming-of-age film. The Spree has always carefully ridden that fine line between cheese and glee, with the adult DeLaughter sometimes giving in too much to his inner child as a songwriter. Considering Justin, played by Lou Pucci, is a senior in high school and can't stop sucking his thumb, the two make a good match, in spite of the tragedy that brought them together.
17. Tom Petty, She's The One (1996)
The one good decision writer-director-star Ed Burns made regarding the follow-up to his overpraised debut The Brother McMullen was to ask Tom Petty—fresh off the great Wildflowers—to do the soundtrack. Now if only Burns had found somebody more qualified to write, shoot, and star in his magnum opus! As it is, Petty's soundtrack more than holds on its own as a stand-alone album, offering more insight into romantic relationships on rough and ragged pop songs like "Walls" and "Hope You Never" than Burns musters in 96 minutes of celluloid. On Petty's expert cover of Beck's "Asshole," he achieves the tricky mix of humor and pathos Burns reaches for but doesn't have the depth to realize. The movie that plays in your head while listening to Petty's She's The One is probably more resonant than the one that made it to the screen.
18. Spoon, Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Although Britt Daniel of Spoon only provides one new song, three old ones, and a few instrumental cues to director Marc Forster and writer Zach Helm's postmodern comedy, his music threads throughout the film, matched to a set of rhythmic new-wave classics. The movie takes a few too many cutesy turns, but Daniel's peppy minimalism carries a lot of the sentiment and drive that Forster and Helm fail to shoulder. Stranger Than Fiction is about uptight, routine-bound people learning to reorder their lives, and Spoon's casual fragmenting of rigid rock and soul song structures tells that story on its own.
19. Prince, Batman (1989)
It's safe to assume that the Batman soundtrack is nobody's favorite Prince album, but it nevertheless qualifies as one of the more fascinating creative detours in a career full of them. The infectious funk anthem "Partyman" adds an additional element of brash braggadocio to the Joker gang's defilement of the Gotham City art museum, in addition to serving as the perfect accompaniment to the self-parody stage of Jack Nicholson's career. The first single, "Batdance," is one of the weirdest singles ever to hit the pop charts, a funk-dance powered by an army of samples, many of them soundbites from the film. The Batman soundtrack later found a strange pop-culture second life in Shaun Of The Dead, when Simon Pegg and Nick Frost decided to hurl it at zombies rather than waste Sign O' The Times or Purple Rain.
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