Baby Driver Soundtrack

The Grammy for Best Soundtrack went to La La Land, and while the music played a huge part in that film, I have no interest in hearing the songs again. I would have voted for Baby Driver, as I said in my review the music was a major part of its success. The character of Baby listens to music constantly to battle tinnitus, usually while driving.

I finally bought the soundtrack CD, a double album full of buried treasures as well as recognizable hits. Much of its leans toward R&B, as there is a Barry White Song, "Harlem Shuffle," two versions of Lionel Richie's "Easy" (by The Commodores and Sky Ferreira), and "Nowhere to Run" by Martha and the Vandellas.

There are a few rockers, notably "Brighton Rock" by Queen and "Neat Neat Neat" by The Damned. In the more recognizable arena, the CD includes perhaps the greatest driving song ever, Golden Earring's "Radar Love," and one the great rock instrumentals, "Hocus Pocus," by Focus. A few other curious instrumentals include Jonathan Richman's "Egyptian Reggae, "Let's Be Away for a While," by the Beach Boys (I never knew they did an instrumental),and a weird thing by Blur called "Intermission."

The soundtrack also includes the basis for the title, "Baby Driver," by Simon and Garfunkel, a song that I can't quite figure out--Googling it suggests that it's about sex, which is what most rock songs are about, if they aren't about drugs.

I've only mentioned about half of the tracks on this record. The music supervisor was Kirsten Lane, but the soundtrack itself was produced by director Edgar Wright, indicating how much he was involved with the selection of the music. There seems to be a trend for a certain generation of directors to use their record collections to inspire their films (Quentin Tarantino being the foremost). What's great about Baby Driver is that most of the choices are deep cuts and not obvious, and also incredibly eclectic. I think back to a terrible movie like Watchmen, that used Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" (no one should have ever used that music again in a film after Apocalypse Now) and a sex scene set to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." Like anything else, a soundtrack full of pop songs can be very good or entirely rotten