Milestones: 10 Best Soundtracks Since 1998, Minus Garden State
As we continue to roll back the clocks, celebrating the best moments of the last 10 years we've been open for business, our thoughts turn to soundtracks. Once for collectors only, soundtracks now stack up high on the charts, an outcome of the popularity of Hannah Montana, High School Musical, and well, Zach Braff. Take the scene in Braff's movie Garden State where Natalie Portman's character utters what is, depending at how you view the world, the most damning or most celebratory thing that can be said about a pop band:
And the rest is history. The Garden State soundtrack went on to dominate charts and year-end lists, sold tens of thousands, increased the audience for the Shins, earned Braff a Grammy, and (if you pretend Hans Zimmer never got his hands on a piano) changed the niche soundtrack section into a mega-selling enterprise.
But, enough about Garden State. Here are my picks for the 10 most-important soundtracks of the last 10 years:
1999: The setting of Rushmore,
the movie about the kid with all the right ambition directed in all the
wrong places, wouldn't be as complete without Wes Anderson's
hand-curated soundtrack that created a new audience for vintage Cat Stevens, the Kinks, and the instrumental works of Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh.
2000:
The soundtrack to the inimitable Lars Von Trier musical Dancer in the Dark--a definite
must-see about a Czech immigrant mother going blind amid a workaday
existence--finds Bjork at her finest. Exuberant, heartbreaking, and at times even
uncharacteristically restrained, her post-industrial Broadway reveries
outperform all expectations of her acting abilities.
2001: Any movie that includes a subplot about a rabid record collector requires an excellent soundtrack. Ghost World
introduced many would-be music addicts to undiscovered 1950s Bollywood
gems, New Orleans swing, true Delta blues, and of course the
unforgettable send-up in terrible nu-blues bar band, Blueshammer.
2002: Weaving together the lives of three different women living in different eras, Phillip Glass's driving, haunting compositions for The Hours
perfectly matched the tenuous urgency of Michael Cunningham’s
narrative. It is as plaintive as it is exquisitely sumptuous, memorable
even beyond the construct of the film.
2003: Did people even buy TV soundtracks before The O.C.? This quintessentially sun-dappled soundtrack no doubt set the scene of
many a backyard BBQ well outside the county line of that particularly
fascinating Southern California drama hotbed.
2004:
By this point, filmgoers knew what to expect with a Wes Anderson film:
imaginative plots, hilarious dialogue, Bill Murray, and a soundtrack
that featured the Kinks and Mark Mothersbaugh. Musically, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou strayed from that formula, adding Brazilian singer Seu Jorge’s bossa nova covers of the best of Bowie's Life on Mars to the mix.
2005:
The first of three soundtracks to the show about some seriously randy
Seattle doctors made more new fans of below-the-radar artists like the Postal Service, Tegan & Sara, and Inara George than all the college radio stations, hipster boosters, and indie music blogs put together.
2006:
Try as you might, you can't not love Jennifer Hudson's rendition of
"You're Gonna Love Me" or nearly period-perfect Berry Gordie-inspired
originals like "Love You I Do." Also, lest we forget, this movie and
soundtrack redeem Eddie Murphy's former pop-music crimes (see: "Party All the Time (My Girl Wants To)."
2007: Comprising Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, the Swell Season starred in Once--both
the movie and the soundtrack--and became one of music's true-life fairy
tales when the two unknown, unsung talents took home a Best Song
Oscar for "Falling Slowly."
2008:
Looking back, it's hard to tell what was more surprising: the success
of the little indie movie about a plucky pregnant teen who says the
darnedest things, or K-records artist Kimya Dawson's becoming an overnight sensation (we’re talking Moldy Peaches reuniting on TV’s The View).
--Gabi Knight
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