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Salutations, ghosts and ghoulies and all manner of creepy crawlies! It's the week of Halloween, so now's your time to go out and be your spookiest selves! And the Bizarre One is here to give you the soundtrack for an unforgettable night! If you know me, you know I have a strong appreciation for soundtracks, but also all manner of musical genres. So for this entry, I have something special for you, part topic blog, part rarities collection. I've been circling around this topic for a while, so now it's finally time to give it its due time. Let's dive into the fun world of jukebox soundtracks!
For those of you who don't know, this derives from the term "jukebox musical", where the production in question uses existing popular songs instead of original compositions made specifically for them. Jukebox soundtracks are much the same. Instead of commissioned original score made specifically for that one property, the soundtrack is composed of existing licensed songs from popular artists. It may not seem like much, but this simple idea creates some unique experiences, forever linking certain songs with different stories and also creating time capsules for specific eras. And on that topic, the late 90s and early 2000s in particular seem to be an absolute gold mine for these. So let's dive in!
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To start off and bouncing off of my previous blog, I bring you one of the most important games of my childhood (first game I ever installed on the home computer) and an absolute legend that has defined a generation - Need For Speed Underground! Jukebox soundtracks had already been the norm for the franchise at this point, but this collection of songs just hits different. It's a perfect blend of diverse and awesome songs by both popular and lesser known artist that bring forth the best that 2003 had to offer. I love how you get fast paced metal and techno for when you're racing and more chill hip-hop and electronic for when you're in the menu. Sometimes it's so fun, you almost forget you're supposed to play, because you just wanna sit back and enjoy the music. And even though the racing itself is second to none, it would never be as good without the incredible songs that accompany it. For me, I found my favourite band of all time Static-X here and many other artists from this mix became favourites of mine too, so I can never repay this game for what it did for me.
Much the same can be said of the sequel, Underground 2! Releasing just a year later, it's crazy that they were able to bring the same level of quality once again and have a soundtrack that is just as potent and memorable. It somehow feels totally different from the previous, yet carries that same vibe and charm that gives it that legendary status!
And if two hits in a row wasn't enough, they came back swinging with arguably the greatest Need for Speed game ever, 2005's Most Wanted! The game itself was pure perfection, but the music along with it was an absolute joy! With bigger names making appearances this time round, we have a thunderous mix of nu metal and early metalcore that perfectly captured the youth sound of the early 2000s, mixed in with hard hitting electro beats and banging rap tracks with even some off-the-wall picks like prog masters Mastodon in there too! This game and the music on it defined an era that truly has never been matched or repeated since! And I swear that's not just nostalgia talking!
Say what you will about EA, but they were on fire during this time! Beyond NFS, a lot of their sports games had banger soundtracks as well, with one of the best being Fifa Street 2, my favourite football game of all time! Quite a different sound, this game had a wacky and varied mixed that includes everything from drum 'n' bass, jungle and breakbeat to britpop, funk and latino. It's an odd selection at first, but it's memorable and catchy and I think it captures the global outreach of the sport in a great way!
Many other EA Sports games from the era have banger soundtracks, many of which really defy expectations. Take NFL Street 3. You'd expect a game about street-style gridiron football to be all rap and pop, but instead you get industrial metal, stoner rock and beatdown hardcore! It works surprisingly well and is a surefire way to birth some new fans for many of these iconic bands! Also, there has to have been some secret die hard Rob Zombie fan working at EA during this time, who managed to get his songs included almost everywhere. Whoever you are, I salute you!
Extreme sports always need pumping tunes to make them feel right and the iconic SSX series is the perfect example. While almost every entry in the franchise is a good example of this with fan favourite SSX Tricky probably being the best, I want to highlight the lesser known On-Tour! Again, you'd expect a game about skiing and snowboarding to be all pop punk and d'n'b, but instead there's lots of classic rock and oldschool heavy metal mixed with nu-er tunes as well as varied electro bangers. When these play, you damn sure feel the wind in your favour and the snow feels sizzling hot beneath your feet! You know the music is good when many games of this era had fully functional music players included, just so you can enjoy the songs on their own!
Speaking of extreme sports, it cannot be overstated how huge skateboarding was back in the day! It was a cornerstone of youth culture and skate parks (or any flat-ish area with some railings nearby) became core gathering spots. Naturally, a lot of the fashion and, more importantly, music of the time gained huge popularity thanks to skater circles! So it's no surprise that the biggest skateboarding game franchise of the era, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, likewise defined a generation! And the music in each and every entry presented the most exquisite mix of rock, punk, metal, rap, techno, house and everything else that could be heard blasting around skate parks at the time. And if it wasn't being heard there already, it started to thanks to the games and kids wanting to recreate their favourite tricks IRL! Success may vary on that one though. It definitely doesn't on the musical front!
But if you like your four wheels to have an engine attached, we can bring it back to racing, rallying has been huge for decades and it was the legendary Colin McRae DiRT series that propelled it to superstardom in the video game space too. My favourite will forever be DiRT 3, as not only is the game brilliant but the musical choices are fantastic too, it feels like a mix of the songs you'd expect on a racing game and on a skateboarding game at the same time, the last hurrah of the 2000s as the new decade was setting in.
For something completely different, let's dive into the bloody mayhem of Killing Floor 2! In contest for being the definitive zombie game, KF2 also decided to go against the grain of most similar series and feature an absolutely stellar soundtrack, mixing both original electro-industrial tracks for a unique feel and a powerful selection of metalcore and deathcore tracks to go ballistic to! I never thought it could work so well, but oh boy does it ever! Now you can mosh with chainsaw and minigun in hand and reap the carnage the music entails. I sincerely thank this game for introducing me to the amazing Demon Hunter!
And if that's not enough metal, then try the most metal video game ever made, Brutal Legend! An epic satirical fantasy that turns the world of heavy metal into a grand open world, each section of which is centered around a specific subgenre. So as you journey on, you get to learn more about classic heavy metal, doom metal, black metal, death metal and so much more! Oh yeah, and the main character you play as is literally Jack Black himself. Hooked yet? You should be! Grind on and stay brutal!
If you want the ultimate jukebox experience, mixed with gameplay that combines all of the above and more, then look no further than the radio stations of the iconic Grand Theft Auto franchise! They always have absolutely exquisite selections of songs and the various stations cover almost every genre imaginable. It's also wonderful how the songs are specially curated to perfectly encapsulate the era and tone of each game. You can jam to the 80s disco and glam rock classics of Vice City, the 90s hip-hop bangers of San Andreas or the immensely varied stations of GTA IV and GTA V, covering everything from old and new pop, punk rock, techno, trance, house and even Soviet folk songs. And you can rest assured that in between the epic tunes, each station will be interspersed by fictional ads and radio programs with the trademark sharp spicy humour the series is known for. By quantity and quality, GTA games stand above all and are the absolute kings of jukebox soundtracks!
But to swerve in a different direction, I want to talk about this, because I don't know if I'll ever get another chance to do so within these blogs - flash games! These have been a cornerstone of internet culture and huge part of my life! If you were around in the 2000s and 2010s, you know exactly how awesome and prevalent they were. Since they were made by passionate people just for fun and for the love of the art, merely dropped on to the web for people to enjoy, they obviously didn't have the opportunity to get an original soundtrack. While some did commission fellow independent internet artists to make music for them, most just grabbed whatever songs they liked and thought would fit the vibe they were going for. Especially on the absolutely legendary Newgrounds, which also allowed you to directly credit the songs you used if they were also on the site, this allowed for incredible synergy between the different artists and it allowed several musicians to become incredibly popular among the site's core userbase. To me, names like Helix6, ParagonX9, Waterflame, cheshyre, xKore, F-777, ph0ne, you probably don't know them, but I remember them and they're all legends to me. A lot of their music is just buried in the depths of the internet, as these were just passionate nobodies, most of whom never developed a serious musical career, but their legacy can still be felt and what can be found, cherish it! It's a true treasure to behold! You just had to be there, man.
And although the world of flash games is boundless, if I must shoutout one particular game and its music, I'm going with Electric Man 2! A beat 'em up fighting game that was a blast to play on the old family computer, this is one of the games that decided to just use existing songs by popular artists instead of works from internet creators. I mean, these games were made and distributed for free and never used for profit, so who cares right? If anything, it's terrific exposure! For me, I've realized in retrospect just how influential the music from this game has been on my own journey of discovery. One of my favourite power metal bands of all time in Rhapsody, one of my first forays into extreme metal with In Flames, early exposure to The Crystal Method and The Chemical Brothers, these are just some of the most important finds I made that all stemmed from this one simple flash game! If that doesn't unequivocally prove the butterfly effect, I don't know what does.
Moving away from games, let's dive into the world of films instead! Soundtrack albums stemming from movies are a huge deal on their own, featuring awesome selections of tracks featured in or inspired by their respective movies. Easily one of the greatest of these is Spawn: The Album, derived from the classic 1997 superhero flick Spawn! Beyond the movie itself, this album has taken on a life of its own for the sheer amount of unique and incredibly memorable music on it. Notably, almost every song is a collaboration between a rock/metal band and an electronic artist, creating some utterly unimaginable combinations that lead to spectacular results. British electro deities The Prodigy teaming with guitar sorcerer Tom Morello? Fellow British techno legends Orbital getting guitar work by Metallica's one and only Kirk Hammet? Metallica themselves being remixed by DJ Spooky? Slayer and Atari Teenage Riot? Are you kidding me? In any other continuity, these would be only ludicrous matchups found in the annals of the internet. But here they were done for real and the results are a spectacular collection of some of the best music the late 90s had to offer! Regardless if you've even seen the movie or not, listen to this album, you'll be amazed!
And if electro and metal aren't the right mix for you, try electro and hip-hop on Judgement Night released before that! Here you can find some even more chaotic combos like Slayer and Ice-T, Cypress Hill and Pearl Jam and so much more, resulting in some of the most unique songs ever conjured. Who would've thought movies could have such profound impact on music through just these little bonus albums!
Since it's Halloween, let me tie it right in with this next entry - the 2003 horror movie crossover Freddy vs Jason! A unique clash of legendary characters never before thought possible, this film is also know for having one of the best soundtrack albums! Honestly, you can even separate it from the movie entirely and appreciate it as possibly the greatest "best-of" albums of 2000s metal! Some of the biggest names from nu metal, groove metal, alternative rock, melodeath, metalcore and more can be found here - Slipknot, Stone Sour, Sepultura, Sevendust, Seether, Lamb of God, Chimaira, Killswitch Engage, Hatebreed, In Flames and that's not even half of it! If you ever want to get into this era of metal, there's probably no better place to do it! I know it helped me.
A similar collection of oldschool bangers can be found on the soundtrack album of the classic 2002 action blockbuster xXx with prime Vin Diesel at the helm! I mean, the film starts with a Rammstein concert as they are playing "Feuer Frei" and what follows is an incredible cascade of absolute classics from the realms of nu metal, hip hop, electro and more! It's an adrenaline pumping experience from beginning to end that never gets dull, both the film and the album!
And for a shorter but similar experience, I want to shout out the underrated Jet Li film The One from 2001. This movie kicks off with a bombastic action scene that starts when a rat bomb explodes, just as Disturbed's David Draiman screams his iconic OH WAH AH AH! I don't care what anyone else says, easily one of the coolest and most memorable opening scenes I've ever seen! And then the final confrontation happens to the Papa Roach hit "Blood Brothers", a song so unbelievably fitting for this movie, I almost thought it was originally made for it. The whole thing is a ton of fun and there's plenty of classic nu metal bangers to accompany the spectacular martial arts action. Do yourself a favour and check it out!
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But for something different, we can't neglect to mention the forever classic The Matrix: Reloaded! I mean, the entire Matrix franchise essentially defined the aesthetics of an entire decade and very few franchises have had a cultural impact as profound as this! This one is much more electronic focused, befitting of the cyberpunk dystopia being presented, but even here there's some heavy hitters from Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Linkin Park and Deftones, among others. It's a very fitting dark and bleak album, interspersed with nu epicness, just the right sound for this groundbreaking story!
And there you go, hope you enjoyed this deep dive into this somewhat niche, yet also far reaching topic! I hope you also don't mind that this blog is a little more opinionated, but that's mainly because I realized over time and as I was gathering material for this blog just how influential these have been on me! I have found so much of my favourite music through songs featured in video games and a lot of banger tracks that defined my early musical journey were somehow on the soundtrack albums of various hit movies of the time! This type of intersection of art forms is just a wonderful thing and it breeds so much discovery and exploration! I know that you've had it happen to you at least once, you hear a song from a movie or game, find it later and that song ends up changing your life forever! That's what makes jukebox soundtracks so special! While some may scoff at the idea, calling it lazy to just grab music off the shelf instead of commissioning an original soundtrack, I think both have their place and when done right, can achieve absolute magic. It can help songs and story beats become forever connected in people's consciousness and elevate both to legendary status. So I hope that with everything featured in this blog, you can encounter more new things that end up changing your life forever! Explore forth and enjoy the journey! Happy Halloween, don't let the spooks get to ya! Stay safe and catch you all again soon!