Nothing like a classic soundtrack
Kate Robertson dusts off the soundtracks worth listening to this summer.
At this time of year, classic films seem to get more than their fair share of air time.
Titanic, Love Actually, Armageddon and The Holiday. If it’s got a 90s power ballad attached to it, even better.
When a great film and a great song come together, they rise together. We saw it with I Will
Always Love You, we saw it with Stayin’ Alive and we saw it with (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life. When a song lands with you on a personal level, the association between song and film lasts forever.
The popularity of the soundtrack dipped in the late 00s but the format has returned with a vengeance. Black Panther, The Fault In Our Stars, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Fifty Shades and The Hunger Games series all put forward carefully curated albums featuring all-star vocalists.
The hits made mainstream radio. The deeper cuts give fans a way to continue enjoying the film as they waited for it to arrive on DVD or hit streaming sites.
Now that we can finally close the book on Christmas carols, here are the soundtracks worth dusting off this summer:
Forrest Gump: Nothing says Christmas like an already long film being stretched out to four hours with ads on free-to-air TV.
It wouldn’t be the holidays without Forrest, Jenny and Sally Field’s eternal wisdom.
Consider yourself warned, this soundtrack is as lengthy as the film.
The two disc beast (which you can stream on Spotify) spans genres, decades and is a greatest hits collection in its own right: Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin right through to Fleetwood Mac and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Listen to it while you’re out for a post-Christmas run for a fully immersive experience.