Baz Luhrmann has a lot to live up to with his adaptation of F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and I’m not talking about him being ‘faithful to the book’, I’m talking about the soundtrack. With his Romeo + Juliet soundtrack still a firm favourite in my CD collection, as I’m sure it is for a lot of people, Baz’s challenge was clearly set before him with this one, and I’m happy to say that he steps up and delivers.
Starting off with a line from Leo Dicaprio’s Gatsby, and some sweet beats from Jay-Z with ‘100$ Bill’, it’s clear early on that this soundtrack is continuing along with Baz’s juxtaposition of old story with contemporary tunes that has served him so well in the past.
The album is packed with winners, with only a couple of duds thrown in. Fergie’s ‘A Little Party Never Killed Nobody’ tanks pretty hard, and is to this album what Fergie is to the music industry, unnecessary and overdone. Lana Del Ray once again underwhelms with her boring emotionless voice on her track ‘Young and Beautiful’, and Emeli Sandé fails at trying to outdo Beyonce at her own game with her cover of ‘Crazy in Love’.
Apart from these, the album flows really well. I was sceptical about Andre 3000 and Beyonce’s cover of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back to Black’, but it’s a sultry, smooth track that somehow does justice to the original. Bryan Ferry proves that he still exists (who knew?) with ‘Love Is The Drug’, and shows that he’s still got some pretty sweet chops with this track slotting right into the pseudo-20s jazz feel of the album. It’s also nice to see Gotye’s ‘Heart’s a Mess’ in the mix, which somehow also gels in perfectly, and a couple of sweet electro songs toward the end of the album polish off the varied range of tracks on the album.
The standouts for me were will.i.am’s ‘Bang Bang’, which I truly can’t stop listening to because it’s so snappy and fun, Coco O of the Quadron’s ‘Where The Wind Blows’, which is another dancey corker, and surprisingly Florence and the Machine’s ‘Over The Love’, which is the first Florence song where her ridiculously overdone operatics don’t make me want to kill myself because they fit into the album so well.
All up, the collection of tracks is a very melancholy one, with some 20s jazz themes weaved in along the way through a wide variety of musical genres. Sia’s ‘Kill and Run’ is the final track, with her tragically detached vocals making it a nice coda for the melancholy mix.
If Baz’s film is as good as the soundtrack, which I highly doubt, then it’ll be a good one. But either way, no matter what kind of music you’re into, this soundtrack is worth a listen. So take an hour and give it a go!
8/10
Reviewer: Louisa Bulley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9xKZPd4w3A