Great contemporary movie soundtrack albums

February 22, 2019 7:37 AM

Back in the '90s movie OSTs where my main music acquaintance vector, with the best ones offering a curated, opinionated slice of the current musical zeitgeist, exposing my ears to music I wouldn't have come into contact otherwise, but within a recognizable framework. What great current movie soundtracks would you recommend and why?

e.g.: Spawn, The Craft, The Crow: City of Angels, Natural Born Killers, Pump Up the Volume, Trainspotting.
Laterally, is there another example of a curated musical anthology kind of thing that would fulfill a similar function?

posted by signal to Media & Arts (22 answers total)

I love the Clueless soundtrack!
posted by cakelite at 7:56 AM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Black Panther
posted by ChuraChura at 8:08 AM on February 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse I did not expect the movie to be so great and the use of music in the movie was also unexpectedly great.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 8:12 AM on February 22, 2019 [11 favorites]

Seconding Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (free with ads on YouTube)
posted by ringu0 at 8:14 AM on February 22, 2019

So just to clarify, you mean collections of songs used in a movie, not original scores?
posted by thelonius at 8:21 AM on February 22, 2019

All of the following soundtracks are in heavy rotation always for me:

The Lost Boys
Spawn (you mentioned this already, but...)
Lost Highway
End Of Days
The Matrix / The Matrix Reloaded
O Brother Where Art Thou
Donnie Darko
Love and A .45
Until The End of The World
Queer As Folk / Queer As Folk 2
Weeds
8 Mile
50 First Dates
Jack Johnson and Friends - Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for The Film Curious George
Portal / Portal 2
Resident Evil(s)
Romeo & Juliet
Shrek(s)
The Cave
posted by jkaczor at 8:27 AM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yes, songs.
posted by signal at 8:32 AM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Soundtracks have always helped introduce me to "new to me" artists... Didn't know about Leonard Cohen until "Pump Up The Volume", Nick Cage until "Until The End of The World", Tom Waits, David Lindley, the list keeps going on and on.

For a period of time, Trent Reznor was really good at curating soundtracks - and apparently he has been continuing to do so (Natural Born Killers, IIRC was one of his).
posted by jkaczor at 8:33 AM on February 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: To clarify, I'm looking for current OSTs, like last few years.
posted by signal at 8:35 AM on February 22, 2019

Yeah... So am I, I guess :-) - on posting, I can see mine are all a little dated now... And, I don't want to become "that old guy" who is always complaining there is no good music anymore (anymore than I already am).
posted by jkaczor at 8:40 AM on February 22, 2019

Baby Driver
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:46 AM on February 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Baby Driver has a second soundtrack, considering there were very few minutes, of its 112 minute length, that lacked for music, while a CD is limited to 79 minutes.

It's a terrific movie, and the music is nearly all diagetic.
posted by Sunburnt at 8:55 AM on February 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

AV Club might offer you some help here, Best Soundtracks of 2018. "A Star is Born" is probably a no-brainer.
posted by Sunburnt at 9:14 AM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Laterally, is there another example of a curated musical anthology kind of thing that would fulfill a similar function?

The new hotness is curated playlists.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:19 AM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Pitchfork just put out this list of the 50 best movie soundtracks of all time, including a representative song plucked from each soundtrack. It contains a good amount of more contemporary selections along with the classics.
posted by zeusianfog at 10:22 AM on February 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Not a movie, but I really liked the use of music in Netflix's Russian Doll, and there is a Spotify playlist available.
posted by the primroses were over at 10:22 AM on February 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Seconding TV Spotify playlists (and other curated playlists). For a while I was using Night Vale's weather as a way to find new and interesting artists. There's a spotify playlist of it here.
posted by dinty_moore at 11:27 AM on February 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

Not a movie, but... the Hamilton Remix introduced me to some new-to-me Latinx artists.
posted by TwoStride at 6:01 PM on February 22, 2019

The Mortal Kombat movie soundtrack has gone in and out of heavy rotation throughout my life, and was my first introduction to Orbital and the Utah Saints.
posted by rhiannonstone at 7:02 PM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

"Great" may be stretching it a bit, but some soundtracks from the past decade or so that I've enjoyed:

Weeds season 4 -- the plot heads to Mexico, so does the music
Chef -- Lot of salsa, classics
Django Unchained
Garden State
Guardians of the Galaxy
The Man With the Iron Fists
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

On the 'curated music' front, Aquarium Drunkard has various mixtapes; can be a little hit or miss, but worth checking out. Steven Van Zandt's Underground Garage has some great garage rock playlists. But these won't necessarily be vehicles for new music discovery (though they can be.) Lastly, a site called Metafilter used to have CD swaps...

posted by Bron at 8:31 AM on February 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

Seconding that TV soundtracks these days are great for this. I have been really enjoying the Mr Robot soundtrack playlist on Spotify.
posted by lunasol at 10:32 PM on February 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Soundtrack from Netflix's "Russian Doll" seems contemporary and interesting.
posted by jkaczor at 12:19 PM on February 26, 2019