Teen films: formulating a soundtrack

I don’t know whether it’s the Halloween paraphernalia bringing back memories of being screeched at by a god-fearing old lady during my tween days as a pioneer of trick-or-treating in our country. Maybe it’s the winding up of the school year; uni friends making desperate pleas for a road trip to the beach, the 7-Eleven, anywhere out of sight of the books they were supposed to have read throughout the semester and have just found under a pile of bottles and baggies in time for exams. Maybe it’s just my own regression brought on by being back at work following the end of an overseas trip. Whatever the reason, I’ve been compiling a teen-movie soundtrack in my head.

Not for any actual teen movie, mind you. The film I’m piecing together a soundtrack for doesn’t exist. It doesn’t have a plot, it doesn’t have any characters and it doesn’t have any expression-challenged Home And Away cast members with menacing robotic arms extending out from under their skirts*.

In truth, I’ve always been a complete sucker for teen-movie OSTs. It was my dirty little secret as a teenager. While I’d go to school and swap Lagwagon and Rancid albums with my friends, at home, buried under the pile of punk compilations, were the soundtracks to The Faculty, Scream, Go, Dazed And Confused, American Pie and The Craft. Some kids had fetish mags or Cabbage Patch doll collections; I had the Varsity Blues CD.

Some soundtracks where better than others, obviously, but all got a decent airing on my one-disc Sanyo boombox. And many, I noted, followed a similar formula: newer ‘indie’ or ‘alternative’ (as was the flavour of the day) bands followed by cutting-room-floor songs by some big-name acts, a late ‘80s metal or heavy rock track, an unknown female-singer ballad or two and a wet crooner rock song to finish.

I was always kind’ve disappointed by the soundtracks but I kept going back for more because I wanted to relive the parts in the movies where the teenagers actually had really exciting love lives and got to do heaps of cool shit like root old people or eat each other. It’s nice to know some things don’t change: this month has seen an unusual number of OK but not that inspiring sex-and-blood-lust teen-movie soundtracks appear. Well, three, but for some reason they’ve all landed on my desk at the same time so it’s like a friggin’ Passion Pop-fuelled Schoolies orgy over here.

Jennifer’s Body opens with Florence & The Machine and Panic At The Disco, runs through tracks by Dashboard Confessional and Screeching Weasel (their cover of I Can See Clearly Now, more than making up the old-dudes filler quota) to lesser-known Texas rockers The Sword and model turned singer Lissy Tullie. The Twilight Saga: New Moon starts with Death Cab For Cutie and Band Of Skulls and moves onto The Killers, Muse, California actor turned singer Anya Marina, ‘elder statesmen’ Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and emotional-flame-blowers Editors. Whip It! goes the ‘indie punk’ version of that path: Tilly & The Wall to The Ramones, The Raveonettes, Jens Lekman and Gotye (if you spot either, make ‘em buy you a drink with the royalties), The Ettes, Little Joy and the ‘revelation-dealing’ Apollo Sunshine.

So I’ve been compiling my own teen-movie soundtrack for the week in my head. One that wouldn’t totally blow but would generally stick to the tested track all teen-movies OSTs must travel. It would open with tracks from I Heart Hiroshima’s new album The Rip and Crayon Fields’ incredible All The Pleasures Of The World for plaid-and-moccasin credibility. It might move into something from Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 – maybe Empire State Of Mind featuring Alicia Keys or something equally suited to being played really loud from the car with the boot up in the school car park. New York’s glitchy Silk Flowers would add the atmos-dance edge. Bluebottle Kiss (Generic Teen) and Caustic Soda could have the money set aside for old bands, for no other reason than I’ve been thinking about them lately and they could probably use it. Something from Scott Matthew’s upcoming There Is An Ocean… album (already available on iTunes) would add the ‘touching moment’ and Pop Will Eat Itself’s Ich Bin Ein Auslander would finish it all off. Because I fucking can.

*This is a reference to Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, not to my own pre-prison fantasy diaries.

From October 2009