The Great Great Gatsby Soundtrack

When I heard that Baz Luhrmann was doing a movie version of The Great Gatsby , I knew that I was inevitably going to be drawn into all of the hype… I wouldn’t be able to help myself… to me, this man is pure genius and everything he touches feels like it has been personalised just for me.

I knew even before I saw the movie that I would not be disappointed. It has everything that I love in a movie; grandeur, beautiful film sets, everyone talking, and what is to me, the best movie music score of the year.

Now there has been much discussion about the song and artist choices, but as far as I am concerned it is pure gold… just as everything else he touches.

Baz Luhrmann is a visionary. He is not about doing the same old same old. He is always cutting edge when it comes to delivering a movie adaptation. I think he is more about challenging his audience than about keeping them comfortably happy or delivering to them what might be expected. That is why I love his work.

Set in the 1920’s, you would expect that the film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, would be filled with jazzy tunes from the 1920’s… wrong… and gladly too.

I am not a huge fan of jazz… well, not in it’s traditional sense. But that is okay, I would have endured it for the sake of the visuals of a Luhrmann production. Thankfully I didn’t need to as Baz, with the help of Jay Z (producer), has come good with his own signature jazz styling which is embellished with hip hop and other musical nuances of our current era by modern artists including some of my current favourites. Bonus!

Florence and the Machine, Lana Del Rey, The xx, Beyonce, Jay Z, Gotye and even Brian Ferry, loan their voices to deliver a modern take on the 1920’s that is sometimes haunting, sometimes blow-away beautiful and just in general awesome listening.

Only one slight disappointment… the soundtrack doesn’t feature ‘Happy Together’ by Filter which I have been singing over and over in my head since I first saw the movie promos in which it appears… very hot rendition, though its exclusion may have something to do with its recent appearance on anther soundtrack, so I will forgive whoever is responsible, and I have tracked it down and added it to my own playlist.

A soundtrack that I love every listening second of.