For the past two weeks, escaping to the bright, breezy fantasy world of San Junipero has not sounded like such a bad idea. “San Junipero” offers hope in dark times, as the fictional city in the cloud from Black Mirror’s third season suggests that heaven is indeed a place on earth. And now you can relive all the emotions and romance of “San Junipero” with the official episode soundtrack, set to release next month. In an interview with Vogue, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker talked about the connection between nostalgia and music in the episode’s anchor setting of 1987: “All the music I said I hated, I secretly loved all of it; T’Pau and all of that,” he said. “It was a great way for me to indulge in all those guilty pleasures. To go back and revisit all of that music people claimed to hate in 1987.”
You can transport back to the 80s—and the 90s, and the early 2000s—with Clint Mansell’s dreamy soundtrack, which scores Kelly and Yorkie’s time-and-space-defying love story. Mansell also composed the original scores for Black Swan and Requiem For A Dream. Check out the “San Junipero” tracklist:
1. San Junipero (80s-90s-00s-??s)
2. Faith, Hope, Fear & Falling In Love
3. Tick Tock (Clock Of My Heart)
4. Night Drive
5. Property Of Tucker Systems
6. In Sickness, In Health
7. Life Eternal
8. Waves Crashing On Distant Shores Of Time
9. Endless Summer
10. San Junipero (Saturday Night In the City Of The Dead)
Yeah, okay, we’re already crying from those song titles alone (and also thinking about Gugu Mbatha-Raw dancing in close-up on an endless loop).
The official soundtrack releases on December 2, but in the meantime, you can also listen to the 42-song “San Junipero” playlist that Brooker put together on Spotify, which includes songs featured in the episode like the aforementioned Belinda Carlisle jam, as well as other ’80s classics from The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Whitney Houston, Kim Wilde, Madonna, Public Enemy, Olivia Newton-John, and Salt-N-Pepa. According to Brooker, in addition to songs actually heard in the episode, the expanded playlist includes “tracks which didn’t make it in (for rights/other reasons)” and “tracks which inspired elements of the story.”
