BABY DRIVER.

 

Movie music International has always been a blog/site that brings you a varied collection of articles and reviews all of which are related to movie scores or soundtracks. I personally feel that the emergence of the SONG score slightly damaged film music during the late 1970, s and through to the 1990, Of course there have been a few exceptions where the songs were written specifically for a scene or sequence within a movie, but movies that just more or less tacked various songs onto its soundtrack without a lot of thought I cringed at. However, this month with the release of the movie BABY DRIVER I heard good things about the soundtrack and the involvement of the director of the film Edgar Wright into the musical side of things, ok this is not an original score and is basically just a collection of songs, some familiar, others obscure. But the way in which the director built his story around the songs he had selected is somewhat clever and even ingenious, apparently, he took the songs from his Spotify/iTunes account and put them into timing order to see what song would fit a sequence he was planning to commit to celluloid, so the songs fit the scene like a glove and give much support to each sequence. Like I said the songs range from standards and favourites such as, THE HARLEM SHUFFLE by Bob and Earl, Egyptian Reggae by Johnathan Livingstone, Un-square Dance by Dave Brubeck, Debora by T.Rex, Radar Love by Golden Earring and Never Gonna Give You Up by the ever-popular velvety voiced Barry White. Then we get the slightly more obscure (well to me anyway) such as EARLY IN THE MORNING by Alexis Korner’s blues incorporated and THE EDGE by David McCullum (yes that David McCullum) which incidentally could easily be mistaken for a neo jazz track from a Piero Piccioni Italian western/erotic score. Incidentally, please check out his albums on Spotify, you will be glad you did.  But also in there we are treated to TEQUILA, NOWHERE TO RUN, BRIGHTON ROCK, BONGOLIA and the title cue BABY DRIVER courtesy of Simon and Garfunkel and includes tracks by BLUR, BRENDA HOLLOWAY, FOCUS, THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION and BECK etc. So, what I am saying is the soundtrack to BABY DRIVER although not film music in the true sense or as we see it as collectors of original scores, is in fact an entertaining listen, its easy on the ear and evokes many memories of a lost youth (maybe at times misbegotten) and opens the doors to tracks that maybe one has not experienced before. A nice collection of songs, that just happens to be on the soundtrack to a movie.