Soundtrack Score or Soundtrack Songs?

It is one of the most frustrating and disappointing feelings a score lover can experience. You just saw a film you loved, or at least loved the score of and bolt over to the CD store. You grab the title and look at the listing on the back. Your excitement is deflated as you look down the list of either disposable new songs by up and coming flash- in-the-pan groups, or overused pop standards that have been in six movies already this year. Then, nestled snugly as the last track is, yes it is, score! If this was last summer and the movie was Phenomenon and the person was me, then I would be stupid enough to buy this thing.

That's how much I like Thomas Newman's stuff. I wanted to hear that opening title music so badly that I was prepared to sift through yet another Eric Clapton and friends album. Then, I discovered that the paltry three minutes of music wasn't even what I wanted, it was some other cue that I can't even recall. The next person who was lucky enough to be a passenger in my car took this baby home absolutely free.

I think it was Danny Elfman himself who said that people either want one or the other: score or songs. I totally agree with him, but Hollywood doesn't seem to get this concept. So we get albums like The Player where a Japanese man sings the karaoke version of something called "Rose's Cafe." I know a lot of people were aching to hear that one. Sifting through songs is just a sad fact of the score lover's existence. Anyone at all seasoned has come across some of these variations:

The "All Score with One Song" Album: A small price to pay, especially if you have a good forty minutes of score music along with it. Jerry Goldsmith's Rambo: First Blood Part 2 is such a good listen, you can almost forgive the inappropriately titled ballad, "Peace in Our Life" from the supremely talented Frank Stallone (sic) that is stuck in the middle ("Love Theme" from Rambo 2???). It's not always that bad, though. If you can possibly find a copy of Stewart Copeland's Rumblefish in a markdown bin somewhere, you get to hear Stan Ridgeway's song "Don't Box Me In" which actually complements the rock style score nicely.

"Two Songs: The Rest Score": Actually more common than you think. Elfman's Beetlejuice has two Harry Belafonte songs on it. So does Star Trek: First Contact. A popular way to package these albums is to bookend the score with songs, like Hans Zimmer's Backdraft which has two Bruce Hornsby tunes—one of which, "The Show Goes On" is a favorite with trailers that want to express a warm feeling of nostalgia.

"Fifty-Fifty Albums": Pretty annoying. For die hard fans only. I guess I shouldn't assume that all the songs will be unlistenable, but come on, have you ever actually listened to True Lies all the way through? How about Goldsmith's Ghost and the Darkness, which ends the album (missing several great cues, by the way) with 20 minutes of dissonant native squawking? In some of these cases the movie didn't have enough material for a score or a song album so they used each other to fill up the gaps. For the best (worst) example of this format, check out The War, where Thomas Newman's score is peppered in with the '70s songs with no apparent thought put in at all.

"Songs with an Extended Score Suite": For the desperate only. If you jumped the gun last summer and bought the first Mission: Impossible album you know what I am talking about. Unfortunately, only the big "event" movies get more than one album. Austin Powers did it too, but George S. Clinton's mock-'60s style score fits in better than expected. Most of these albums just annoy people who bought it for the songs. The K-tel like double album that came out for Forrest Gump had some Alan Silvestri music on it. I've been around people that just turned off the album when it came on. Only much later did the thought strike them to put out a score album, and even that had gospel songs interrupting the flow.

There are two schools of thought on this issue. Is it "All or nothing, get with it Hollywood!" or "I'll take what I can get like a good score fan"? Well, until everyone agrees, all I can say is thank God I have a programmable CD player.

Editor's Note: Soundtrack collectors should know that song-oriented albums tend to outsell score albums by an enormous margin. Song/soundtracks have become big business, and to many of the people involved with them, it's a shock that anyone is interested in the score. We'll hopefully explore this more in Film Score Daily as well as Film Score Monthly. By the way, Thomas Newman said in an FSM article (#72, by Doug Adams) that the point of the source cues in the CD to The Player was to illustrate the different environments the lead character finds himself in. I've always enjoyed them in the sequence Newman provided. -Lukas