Soundtracks that change the song order from the movie

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by JAuz, Aug 12, 2019.

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  1. JAuz

    JAuz Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    US
    Just popped in the soundtrack to Pretty In Pink and it started off with OMD's "If You Leave". This is, of course, is the final song in the movie. There's a lot of build up getting to that point in the story so it's a little strange to hear this song at the beginning of the soundtrack instead of the end.

    The song that starts off the movie, Psycheldelic Furs' "Pretty In Pink", is song 5 on the soundtrack. At the end of side 1 in its original format. That's also a bit weird after watching the movie.

    I guess I'm a little surprised that all soundtracks aren't a mini-recreation of their respective movie. I assume that the songs that have been licensed will appear in the same order as they do in the movie so you kind of re-experience it in condensed form via its music.

    I can't think of any good reasons offhand to rearrange the order of the songs. In this example, John Hughes even wrote in the liner notes saying how important to the film the music is. I do wonder if he chose this soundtrack order himself. In a sense, he's already made a playlist by the order of appearance in the film, which is a carefully constructed piece of art. And someone has changed that order.

    It's a good time to create a playlists though!
     
  2. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I'd think that most soundtracks are not arranged in the order the songs appear in the film. I've honestly never heard of someone expecting that they would be. They are arranged to be a pleasing listening experience.

    Example: the Almost Famous soundtrack is brilliant. It features only a fraction of the songs from the film, arranged to be a killer playlist. It opens with 'America' by Simon & Garfunkel and closes with 'Something in the Air' by Thunderclap Newman. Fantastic.
     
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  3. LeBon Bush

    LeBon Bush Hound of Love

    Location:
    Austria
    The soundtrack to American Psycho has this weird track order as well. It starts with a remix of Dope's cover of "You Spin Me Round" (which wasn't even used in the movie at all, IIRC), "True Faith" - the first song in the film - is track no. 5, that Bowie song from the end credits is the second track and "Hip To Be Square" is the last song, at least on the CD pressing which still featured that track. Makes no sense at all.
     
  4. Jmac1979

    Jmac1979 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville, KY
    Purple Rain is a classic example. "Purple Rain" ends the album, but if you saw the movie, you know he performs Purple Rain, then comes back on for an encore and does I Would Die 4 U and Baby I'm A Star, the two tracks that precede it on the album. I suppose it's because it makes sense the end the album with the epic title track instead of putting it on the middle of side two. Same with When Doves Cry coming before Computer Blue/Darling Nikki in the movie, but following it on the album since it starts off side two
     
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  5. ShockControl

    ShockControl Bon Vivant and Raconteur!

    Location:
    Lotus Land
    The idea of a soundtrack or film score album is to create a listening experience, not to recreate the film. Sometimes the film order works, sometimes it does not, and sometimes opinions are divided.
     
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  6. vinylontubes

    vinylontubes Forum Resident

    Location:
    Katy, TX
    I tend to agree with this. Often the best song in a movie is used during the end credits. Most people in a theater just get up and leave. For a movie soundtrack album, the flow of the songs to songs is more important. In the case where composed score is the soundtrack, it makes more sense to recreate the flow of the movie even with reprising tracks if necessary.
     
  7. JAuz

    JAuz Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    US
    I guess I need to revisit my assumptions! And I have that Almost Famous soundtrack too, though it's been a while since I listened to it. Time to go put it on again.
     
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  8. Platterpus

    Platterpus Senior Member

    Pink Floyd - The Wall
     
  9. hi_watt

    hi_watt The Road Warrior

    Location:
    San Diego, CA
    The score for the Mad Max (1979) soundtrack is not in order, and it kind of bugs me.
     
  10. MilMascaras

    MilMascaras Musicologist

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Some are so outrageously out or order, that I have a stupid compulsion to correct them in a custom playlist:
    (though I do have to accept and respect the music directors vision in sequencing the LP for commercial flow...)

    Hannah (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by The Chemical Brothers, I had to radically re-sequence the tracks to "correct it?", and ended up with this order: 3, 6, 15, 5, 16, 17, 2, 9, 4, 7, 8, 10, 1, 18, 19, 13, 12, 14, 20, then 11... wow!

    But The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show is nearly perfectly sequenced, with small omissions depending on whether you are examining the Movie soundtrack or the Original London Cast Recording, but I would expect Theatre Stage Shows to be the exception for nearly perfect sequencing...

    I also had a bit of fun "correcting" soundtrack albums and contributing to the Wikipedia pages for:
    "Adding songs missing from the Soundtrack", and therefore own definitive corrected versions of:

    • Fast Times at Ridgemont High Soundtrack
    • Hi Fidelity Soundtrack
    • Napoleon Dynamite Soundtrack
    • Roll Bounce Soundtrack

    These were all missing so many key songs, I made a great effort in hunting down the correct / missing / original tracks and perfecting the sequencing ...
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2019
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  11. ShockControl

    ShockControl Bon Vivant and Raconteur!

    Location:
    Lotus Land
    Another thing to keep in mind is that, if the soundtrack album dates from the era of LPs, it was generally considered important to have strong side openers and closers.
     
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  12. Eric_Generic

    Eric_Generic Enigma

    Location:
    Berkshire
    If You Leave was the big lead single and the soundtrack's most successful hit, so I guess A&M's logic was to kick the album off with its best-known and popular track. I do get what you are saying though. Pretty In Pink's one of my favourite films/soundtracks and the song order of the album is very much at odds with the film's storyline.

    EG.
     
  13. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    'American Psycho ' is a bizarre film adapted from a totally bizarre and ultraviolent book. Thus..the soundtrack is bizarre.
    Off topic but...
    I'd like to see a truer film version of 'American Psycho '
     
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  14. LeBon Bush

    LeBon Bush Hound of Love

    Location:
    Austria
    Me too. But which cinema would even show a "truer" version of AP that doesn't a.) turn it into a moralist tale like the "Less Than Zero" adaption or b.) becomes just the bizarre dark comedy Mary Harron did. There's some passages in that book I couldn't even start to imagine being shown on a screen (the Zoo, for example... you'll know what I mean).
     
  15. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    Oh! I was thinking specifically about the zoo bit when I was typing my post and I do indeed know what you mean .
     
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  16. LeBon Bush

    LeBon Bush Hound of Love

    Location:
    Austria
    I think that was the part of the book which just made me put it aside for a few days. That scene was just extreme. No way this would find its way into a film adaption, and I don't know if that's even something to regret.

    But in general, you're very right about the feeling of the film. Turning it into a dark psychological comedy secured the R rating, but it was a weird decision considering how different Patrick in the book actually is (also taking into account the bits we get to know about his adolescence).
     
  17. ShockControl

    ShockControl Bon Vivant and Raconteur!

    Location:
    Lotus Land
    One of my favorite 1960s film scores is The Thomas Crown Affair by Michel Legrand.

    It always bummed me out that the album didn't include the bank robbery music that happens early in the film. Finally, Quartet or Music Box released the actual film score tracks on CD a few years back, and I was very happy to have them. The bank robbery music is the first or second thing you hear in the film, after the opening theme, and as an isolated listening experience, the track completely does not work there in relation to everything that comes afterward. In fact, as badly as I'd wanted that track, I realized that Legrand was right, and that it did not work for the album. The only place I could get it to even mildly make sense was as the second-to-last track, right before "The Crowning Touch," but I abandoned that idea. I'm still very happy to have it, but it just doesn't work on the album.

    That is just one of dozens of examples I can provide regarding album presentations of scores.
     
  18. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    I enjoyed the film for what it was but thrre's definitely another movie to be made here. And without Christian Bale.One of the aspects of the book I'd like to see expanded on is the character's love of the blandest music possible but I don't see how that would translate to film . Same thing with that inane television show he watches.
    Oh!Sorry , OP...dudn't mean to go off this much. Full stop.
    Cheers
     
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  19. ted209

    ted209 Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Sussex, UK.
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  20. Eric_Generic

    Eric_Generic Enigma

    Location:
    Berkshire
    Even worse are the soundtracks which omit one of the most high-profile tracks for one reason or another.

    Like, say, This Used To Be My Playground which isn't on the League Of Our Own CD soundtrack.

    EG.
     
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  21. JAuz

    JAuz Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    US
    Those are annoying! But at least there's some kind of explanation. I chalk it up to some kind of rights issue and how the music business works.

    Another strange category are soundtracks that include music "inspired by" a film. They were never in the film to begin with and sometimes seem like arbitrary inclusions.
     
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  22. John B Good

    John B Good Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    NS, Canada
    Count me in as one who'd like soundtrack albums to be "a mini-recreation of their respective movie"s.


    The Crying Game is one example that irritated me greatly by not having the music on the cd in the order it occurred in the movie. .
     
  23. Platterpus

    Platterpus Senior Member

    Midnight Express IIRC.
     
  24. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    In my day sonny, ya couldn't even own a home version of the movie, so, unless you paid $65 for a Super 8 reel of 12 minute excerpts of a blockbuster, the soundtrack LP was the only "souvenir" of the movie you got. And, if the only reason you ordered it from Columbia House was to get "that song from that movie", and it damned well better be the first track on side one, or you would leave it in a pile among the Billy Joel and Steve Miller records and forget until months later why you ever bought it.
     
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  25. John B Good

    John B Good Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    NS, Canada
    Is there a thread on soundtracks that leave out key music pieces that made the movie so enjoyable?

    For example it looks like the soundtrack cd for the movie Something Wild doesn't have the David Byrne number that opens the movie :(
     
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