SOUNDTRACKS

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SOUNDTRACKS

by Guy Aoki

A few years ago, the typical movie soundtrack album would contain instrumental, orchestrated music scored as background music for individual and specific scenes in the film. If there was a main theme or highlight to the story, there would be one vocal song that could be used as a single to promote the film (e.g., “The Way We Were,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” “Rocky”).

But along with the growing importance of videos in the mid-’80s and a decline in 45 sales has come the necessity of having multiple-hit singles on studio albums—and record companies now lean toward a multi-producer package, with each contributing two or three potential singles. It’s a move calculated to ensure long-term consumer interest by allowing the release of one single after another to build a strong foundation for album sales. And the trend toward multiple singles has clearly manifested itself in the modern-day soundtrack album, most of which now contain 10 different artists contributing one track each, produced by their regular producer. What it boils down to is that record execs began to realize the cross-promotional possibilities in including hit songs in movies, each of which could spin off their own separate videos incorporating scenes from the movie—promoting the artist at the same time, not incidentally. In 1984, for instance, Footloose spun off six Top 40 hits by Kenny Loggins (who had two), Deniece Williams, Mike Reno & Ann Wilson, Shalamar, and Bonnie Tyler, and sent the soundtrack to #1 for 10 weeks.

Which is to say it was one helluva commercially viable formula.

In 1986, CBS’ Top Gun was also an unqualified success, producing big hits by Berlin, Kenny Loggins (again), and Loverboy, spending five weeks at #1. But for each success the label had, there were the disappointing failures as well: Ruthless People, containing tracks by Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Kool & The Gang, Luther Vandross, Dan Hartman and Billy Joel (who had the only hit, “Modern Woman”), failed to excite buyers. It barely scratched the Top 20. And last year’s Over The Top, featuring Sammy Hagar, Kenny Loggins (yawn), Asia and Eddie Money, actually failed to go over #120 on the album chart.

MCA, rejuvenated when label-chief Irving Azoff came aboard, has come to be known as the king of the soundtrack labels, sometimes seeming to release more soundtracks than regular studio albums by their own artists. Using the same multi-artist/multi-producer formula, they’ve also had their share of major successes in the past three years, with Beverly Hills Cop in ’85 (Glenn Frey, Harold Faltermeyer, the Pointer Sisters and the Jets) and the TV soundtrack to Miami Vice (Glenn Frey, Jan Hammer, Phil Collins and Tina Turner), which spent an undeserved 11 weeks at #1.

But for every Beverly Hills Cop, there’s been a Body Slam, Dragnet or Dudes. Critics complain that many of today’s “hip” movies are just excuses for throwing in wall-to-wall, blaring, uptempo tracks that have nothing to do with the movie or scenes themselves. (In order for a song to be on a soundtrack, it has to be heard in the movie, right?) Siskel and Ebert complained that they were so bombarded with hit after hit in Beverly Hills Cop // that it left them with no space to relax their minds or to concentrate on the movie itself.

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One has to wonder which really came first—the movie’s plot or the exciting premise of throwing together a collection of hit artists in order to pre-sell an album. MCA’s VP of A&R and Soundtracks, (athy Nelson, declined to answer quesons regarding the label’s approach to oundtracks.) i

Still, many artists are able to use their one-song contribution to a soundtrack to their career advantage. Since most bigname artists release studib albums only once every two to three years (after their five or six singles have been squeezed out and the public has had a chance to recover from their over-exposure), that one-shot hit in between regular studio albums helps to keep their name in the public eye and ear. And one song involves a minimal amount of time and effort.

Eric Carmen, for example, when asked by old friend/producer Jimmy lenner to contribute a song to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, spent just five days in a studio three miles from his home in Cleveland re-working the demo he was sent. “By the time we were kind of getting the ? finishing touches on it,” he recalls, “Jimmy said, ‘Sounds real good! Looks like | it could be a single.’ I said, ‘great!’, and ; I, of course, had no idea that the film was gonna be a huge success. I really hadn’t heard it. Actually, when Jimmy first told me about it, he said, ‘I’m working on this film called Dancing Dirty.’ ” He laughs. “I said, ‘Hmmm... ’ And as it turns out, 5 it’s Dirty Dancing, but hey, that’s close enough!”

Carmen, after disappointing sales of his Geffen “comeback” album in ’85, was without a label deal at the time, and did “Hungry Eyes” as a one-shot for RCA. It turned out to be his biggest hit in 11 years, riding the crest of the soundtrack’s surprising success, which spent over two months at #1, pushing out both Michael Jackson’s Bad and Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel Of Love.

Now, the 38-year-old former Raspberries singer, having finally won a sevenyear legal battle against his former publisher, can relax for the first time in years. “I love being in a position of having a hit record and a video on TV,” he laughs. “And an album that’s sitting at #1. Not being so financially insecure that I have to jump at the first record deal that somebody has offered me. I mean, things are fairly good now, so I can kind of sit here and wait for the right offer.”

Soundtrack hits can also break new artists who have been struggling for years to gain pop-radio acceptance. Simple Minds, for example, hit it big in 1984 with “Don’t You Forget About Me” from the Breakfast Club soundtrack. Most recently, critical favorites Los Lobos finally broke through Top 40’s restrictive borders with two hits from La Bamba, both being remakes of old Richie Valens hits. The title song hit #1, and ‘‘Come On, let’s Go,” #21. Although both songs were familiar tunes and commercial enough to be accepted by Top 40 radio, they were also close enough to their Tex-Mex style to work without sacrificing their musical identity. Although it remains to be seen, Los Lobos may now have an easier time having a hit off their next studio album, which will presumably feature their more uncompromised style again.

On the other hand, #1 breakthrough hits don’t always guarantee increased longevity in an artist’s career. As pointed out in the L.A. Times last September, Berlin’s song from Top Gun, “Take My Breath Away” (manufactured for them by Giorgio Moroder and his “SoundtracksR-Us” team), went all the way to #1 and created long-term problems for the group. According to Perry Watts-Russell, the group’s manager, “It alienated AOR radio stations, which considered the song too Top 40. The problem has been that Berlin has not been fully accepted at either format.” And from that point on, they were without a home; the first single off their next studio album (ironically titled Count Three And Pray), “Like Flames,” went up like flames after fizzing out at #82. The problem apparently got so bad that lead singer Terri Nunn not only decided to cut a solo album, distancing herself from the group’s image, but ended up leaving the group altogether! Berlin’s not only without a home on radio now, they’re also without a lead singer.

As Perry Watts-Russell concluded back in September before matters got bad enough to prompt Nunn’s departure, “The nature of the song was not representative of the identity of the band. The lesson here is that if you’re going to have a big hit, it better be with a song that is truly representative of who you are and how you want to be perceived.”

As for the problems of multi-producer soundtrack albums, hit producers Peter Bunetta and Rick Chudacoff (Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, Matthew Wilder) bemoan the state of labels who look narrow-mindedly for an album of too many obvious commercial singles. “See, the way the business is set up now,” Bunetta explains, “there are multiple producers on albums. I’m not for that. But when that comes into play, the record company will come to you and say, ‘Bring us two hit songs.’ And they’ll go to somebody else and say, ‘We need one hit song.’ So they’re obviously trying to build an album of 10 hit singles. And you have your only shot—one that hits home the most. Radio’s so screwed up now.”

“The other thing about the multipleproducer thing,” Chudacoff continues, “is that then, they miss the artist (and) the possibility of growing into something special—instead it’s being homogenized. Each producer is going, ‘OK, what’s going to be the best radio-sounding hit song for this artist?’ ”

As the market continues to be glutted by the multi-artist/multi-producer soundtrack albums (as well as regular multiproducer studio albums, for that matter), the public may eventually become bored with the excessive “take-no-chances-andshoot-for-hits” formula and look for less superficial presentations of artists, preferring tracks that—while may not be obvious hit singles—explore and expand upon the identity of the artists.

And while soundtracks can obviously open doors for up-and-coming artists, engineer comebacks, and provide a bridge between regular studio albums, the formula obviously has to be moderated in order to satisfy the aesthetics of what is otherwise a limited, short-term development approach for the artists involved.

With any luck, labels will start to take a less superficial approach and concentrate more on long-term development of their artists instead of trying to make a quick buck off of what are essentially hodge-podge compilations.

And maybe save the soundtrack concept from going the way of Berlin. ®