BIGGER THAN BLOCKBUSTERS
From The Bodyguard to Barbie: Movie soundtracks can be big business—sometimes bigger than the movie itself. Is the movie soundtrack back and bigger than ever?
Throughout the billion-dollar Barbie film, an instrumental version of Billie Eilish’s hit “What Was I
Made For” weaves in and out, soundtracking the famous doll’s existential crisis. In the final scene — no spoilers! — Eilish’s crackling, saccharine falsetto is finally heard atop the familiar piano. Cue the waterworks.
It is one of many standout musical moments in a movie stacked with them: from Dua Lipa’s disco-pop “Dance the Night,” with lyrics that perfectly sync up to Margot Robbie’s bespoke choreography, to a reimagination of the 1997 Europop hit “Barbie Girl,” courtesy Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice. The music of Barbie has become its own blockbuster, selling 126,000 copies in its first week and debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 200 albums chart.
Barbie music has also earned three Grammy Awards, one Golden Globe and two Academy Award nominations in the original song category – more than any other film.
It is hard to pinpoint how long it has been since a soundtrack has dominated conversation the way Barbie has, particularly at the Oscars — Lady Gaga’s “A Star is Born” performance comes to mind, with the success of “Shallow.” Then there’s
“La La Land,” and “Dreamgirls,” which received three of the five original song nominations in 2007. But overwhelmingly, there has been a drought in zeitgeist-defining film soundtracks.
SOUNDTRACK FORMULAS
Each decade has produced iconic soundtracks. The all-time best-seller is still 1992’s The Bodyguard powered by Whitney Houston and her iconic “I Will Always Love You,” with 45 million copies sold.
And there are many ways soundtracks are created. Often, studios will license recognizable, pre-existing music — likely “the safer play,” as Gary Trust, Billboard’s chart director says — because two-thirds of all music streams are older music.
In the current era, most “successful” soundtracks opt for that — like Guardians of the Galaxy and its 2014 “Awesome Mix Vol. 1” soundtrack, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with songs from the Jackson 5, David Bowie and Marvin Gaye. Musicals have also done well, like “La La Land,” and Disney hits like Moana, and Frozen — although the genre typically doesn’t crossover to pop radio airplay.
Another option is to use original material, like in Barbie — what Trust views as a throwback to movies like Dirty Dancing, released during a time when a single soundtrack could produce multiple radio hits from various artists. In Barbie’s” case, that’s Lipa, Eilish, Minaj and Ice Spice. Spring Aspers, president of Sony Pictures Music Group, says a successful soundtrack is one that works with the film’s narrative to become a critical part of its story. “It’s not just finding who’s the most popular but finding incredibly talented artists that know how to create something that really does an extension of the storytelling,” she said.
When it works, you get songs that permeate pop culture with real staying power linked to the film: like Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” from Batman Forever, or Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic.
“They just become these forever songs .... It’s like a great band who has chemistry: the right song, the right visual, the right scene, it just becomes something so much bigger than itself,” explained Aspers.
SOUNDTRACKS: A CAREER BOOST
“MURDER ON THE DANCEFLOOR” BROKE THE BILLBOARD HOT 100 — A CAREER FIRST FOR ELLIS-BEXTOR — 23 YEARS AFTER THE SONG’S RELEASE. BY THE END OF THAT MONTH, ON TIKTOK ALONE, THE TRACK HAS BEEN FEATURED IN MORE THAN 550,000 VIDEOS AND THE #MURDERONTHEDANCEFLOOR HASHTAG HAS NEARLY 170 MILLION VIEWS.
The right soundtrack sync has the power to break an artist, like in the case of Post Malone’s “Sunflower” with Swae Lee on the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack — the first ever double-diamond single — overseen by Aspers.
Soundtracks can also introduce new audiences to an artist. Take Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 indie dance hit “Murder on the Dancefloor”; recently, the song went viral because of its use in a very memorable (and very nude) final scene in the divisive film Saltburn. In January, “Murder” broke the Billboard Hot 100 — a career first for Ellis-Bextor — 23 years after the song’s release. By the end of that month, on TikTok alone, the track has been featured in more than 550,000 videos and the #MurderOnTheDancefloor hashtag has nearly 170 million views. In February, the viral song brought her U.S. TV debut on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.”
DOES A SUCCESSFUL SOUNDTRACK MAKE FOR A SUCCESSFUL FILM?
There’s a synergy across fans of both film and music. According to Luminate’s 2023 end-of-year report, U.S. movie theater goers are 70% more likely to have attended a live concert in the last six-months than those who don’t go to movie theaters. What’s more, the industry data and analytics company found that 42% of female Gen Z consumers are more likely to discover new music through film soundtracks, which is 20% more than the general public — and could likely speak partially to the success of a film like Barbie.