Greg Burgas, who I’ve only known online for a couple of decades, wrote as as his Question of the Week: What’s your favorite soundtrack?
Then he started coming up with RULES. Old-timey bloggers like Greg (and me, to be sure) always have RULES. His include that he didn’t consider movies where everything is sung. He notes “my absolute favorite soundtrack of all time if I considered this is the score to Jesus Christ Superstar.” My love for Superstar is well-documented, though it goes back to the album prior to the movie.
He also eliminated straight musicals, e.g. The Music Man and The Sound of Music. I like the former but my love of the latter, and also West Side Story, is massive.
Greg continues, “Finally, I narrowed it down to a few. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? has a killer soundtrack. It’s a bit too close to an actual musical for me, though.” Yes, a tremendous collection, and that would have been my pick but…
He ended up with Singles as his favorite. Since I have never owned it, I can’t consider it.
Moi
I’m going to try on a few choices:
A Hard Day’s Night. The Beatles’ first movie has some great songs, including the title track, created at the last minute.
Easy Rider. If it wasn’t the first movie to take previously recorded songs as the soundtrack, it was very early on. Songs such as Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild became strongly affiliated with the film.
Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony is a 2002 documentary film depicting the struggles of black South Africans against the injustices of Apartheid through the use of music. The film takes its name from the Zulu and Xhosa word amandla, which means power. I dare say Greg would bounce it for the singing by the participants, yet note the context. “The freedom songs heard in the film have an important historical context…In South Africa, the songs take on a different meaning, referring to a unique collection of songs tied to the struggle for racial equality during the 20th century. ” There are a lot more songs besides these.
Cold Mountain. I’ve never seen the movie, yet I have the soundtrack. From Wikipedia: Cold Mountain: Music from the Motion Picture shares producer T Bone Burnett with the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a largely old-time and folk album with limited radio play that still enjoyed commercial success, and garnered a Grammy. As a result, comparisons were drawn between the two albums. Burnett brought in musician and scholar Tim Eriksen to teach the performers Sacred Harp singing, which features prominently in the soundtrack.”
Ultimately, I’m going with the Fab Four. It was the first soundtrack I bought with my own money, though I saw the film Help! begore HDN.
