I Know Why I Love Soundtrack Music So Much...

Friday is fun. It's always music. There's alway a playlist. And links. Sometimes I bore you with stuff about film scores. And today is one of those days. LOOKOUT! (There's your warning!)

Across the last three or fours years, in particular, I’ve been on something of a soundtrack-bender. I have loved soundtracks and film scores my whole life, my music collection has always had a strong soundtrack element. But in recent years it has become the absolute focus. I’ve written about this a few times, and even as I have written a few reviews of favourite scores over the last decade or so, I know that a big part of the reason I went so deep into the world of film score was to distance myself, maybe even dissociate from being “a music reviewer”.

No one else (that I knew of) was busy keeping up with Ólafur Arnalds and Clint Mansell and Cliff Martinez. I genuinely love their work — but it gave me a chance to move sideways from feeling ‘forced’ into covering new albums by Coldplay or The National or weighing in on a Beyonce or Taylor Swift album. It’s embarrassing reading people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond having thoughts on this stuff. It’s bad enough reading some people in their 20s and 30s. Music was never meant to be pinned down in this way. And I needed an escape route. I believe I sought refuge in the film-score ambience.

So, yeah, I was still sometimes writing my thoughts down about a current product, but I was doing that to feel invested in the genre, and the practice of listening, as much as I was trying to promote anyone else to buy, or listen to this music. And I was doing it because old habits die hard — and it made as much or more sense to me to write about film music than to weigh in on Taylor and Beyonce albums, like I said…

In the last year or so I’ve returned to the world of regular music also. Still loving soundtracks. But have started buying a few albums from the non-soundtrack world, and I’m listening to complete discographies of old favourites again (Beatles, Nine Inch Nails, Melvins) and upcoming touring acts (Mogwai). And it’s been great finding a way back in.

But the soundtrack obsession continues. And at pace. Yesterday, I bought the compilation of Vonda Shepard songs from the TV show Ally McBeal. I genuinely never once watched a full episode of Ally McBeal. I doubt I liked Vonda Shepard’s songs at all — but I’ve convinced myself I’m building a library, a catalogue for reference. I’ll thin it like an orchard row at some point, and so I’ll probably toss out the CDs I’ve picked up recently for Queer Eye and 50 Shades and all of the Bridget Jones’ movies…

Um. Yeah.

So, that’s where that is at.

But mostly it’s about actual film scores — not just any old soundtrack. And so in and around the dubious collecting I’m building up my “good-taste collection” with scores from Godzilla and Ex-Machina on vinyl, and CDs of the music from Wolf Creek and Eric Serra’s sublime work for Nikita.

Anyway, in all of this madness — and it’s the best kind of madness because it’s not hurting anyone — I realised the pull of great (and even some of the not as great) sountrack music.

It’s simple actually. This is not music that is meant to be listened to.

This is music to be watched. This is music that is meant to blend. It is there to fit someone else’s vision. It is supporting material.

And yet to make the decision to collect it, to listen to it, to either analyse it on any level or simply playlist it and press repeat, is to elevate it; to take control of the music and put it on some other level. Which, in a way, is all fandom. And is all writing about music.

You think you know more about your favourite artist and their music than any of the casual listeners, don’t you? Be honest. Be you Swiftie, or deep Kraftwerk nerd, you know all the lyrics because they are singing your life, or you know the bleeps and bloops in the right order because they still reflect something about you and the energy you want to put into the world. You have put time in on maybe one solo artist or band in particular. And you reckon you know it all. And it is super important to you.

And to listen to film music outside and away from the film is to make the call that the music is important to you; more important, perhaps, than it is to someone else.

I am not saying this to be elitist — or if I am, I’m not meaning it in any ‘bad’ or smug way. I’m more getting at the fact that it’s almost creating a music for yourself; a listening experience for you. Or, rather, for me. In this instance. Obviously, the soundtrack album was released to begin with — so there was always some hope it might be played, might be bought (and not just as a souvenir of a great watching experience). And from Prince, Mark Knopfler, Peter Gabriel, the guitarists for Radiohead (Jonny Greenwood) and The National (Bryce Dessner), on through Brian Eno, Tindersticks, and many others, there are artists that make film music as part of what they do. It’s both connected — to their identity — and separate (from their larger body of work). Then there are people like Max Richter, Philip Glass, Olafur Arnalds and Lisa Gerrard, where the film music they offer is an extension of their other compositional work; they were perhaps chosen for the assignment to offer a little something adjacent to what they already do.

Arguably, I got into The Necks through their score for The Boys. I didn’t quite remember that at the time, but as soon as I started listening to the music of this brilliant band I felt a connection to it; I then remembered I’d heard their amazing music in this dark, excellent Australian film several years before I saw the band live and heard several of their non-soundtrack albums.

Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells is remembered by many for the excerpt that scores The Excorcist, but my intro to Oldfield was his actual score to The Killing Fields. Not entirely similar at all, but with enough moments to connect up the composer as being the same person that made that other famous work 15 years earlier.

Paul Kelly’s score for Lantana — as well as being brilliant, as well as being a tribute to the music of The Necks — feels like some ‘hidden’ album, a deep cut of fandom; for the ‘real’ fans…

Earlier this week I rewatched Eyes Wide Shut, it’s often thought of as ‘lesser’ Kubrick, and I’ve often felt like an apologist of sorts — I like the film but know it’s not really up there with the top half-dozen features he made. It doesn’t need to be though, it’s its own thing. What I did remember about it before rewatching (and I liked it still, though the final hour is punishingly slow) was the glorious music. The expert use of Chris Isaak’s then-new, Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing, and Jocelyn Pook’s sublime score in and around some known classical and jazz pieces. Knowing the music so well was my entry back into the film.

I’m not looking to ever see Under The Cherry Moon again, nor apologise a) for it, nor b) for seeing it the first time, but if I was ever going to watch it again, I’d have its music — which doubles as the album Parade by its star Prince — to help me in. That’s maybe different, since Parade is a banging-good Prince album, but it’s definitely a slight detour from the mega-fame of 1999 and Purple Rain.

I don’t suppose I’m really trying to say too much here — beyond all the words I’ved trotted out at any rate. But it was a lightbulb moment, thinking about how the real joy in listening to film music is in the taking of something that is meant for one thing and giving it a new meaning, a heightened meaning, a different meaning by listening to it away from its original context.

I like that about film scores. And compilation soundtrack albums.

I like that about music. You work hard with it, and then it works for you — and with you — on whole new levels.

To reward for reading through all of this, I have the latest in our ongoing playlist. There is one movie cue in there, but the rest of it is music that’s been chosen simply because it’s great music, not for any film tie-ins, or anything else.

As always, I hope you enjoy it and I thank you for reading, and listening and contributing.

Have a fantastic weekend.