One of this week’s biggest new albums is a blockbuster movie soundtrack that feels like a throwback to a golden era. Which got us thinking about our favorite soundtracks of all time.
Courtesy of Atlantic Records
Dear Storm Chasers,
I’m filling in this week for our critic and regular newsletter writer Ann Powers, and since it’s been hot out and I have popsicles in the freezer, I’m simply dropping into this space to share a recommendation. On this week’s episode of our New Music Friday podcast, my colleagues Stephen Thompson and Daoud Tyler-Ameen had a discussion of the soundtrack to the new would-be-blockbuster Twisters that promptly sucked them into a vortex of discussing the state of the movie soundtrack.
You should listen to their conversation — Daoud and Stephen offer a range of different types of successful soundtracks, list many of their personal favorites and suggest how Hollywood might revive the form following the Barbie and Twisters models. But first, I want to take the opportunity to write about one of my personal favorites, a soundtrack that I’ve never seen on any list of best or most iconic of the form.
The movie is That Summer!, a British film released in the summer of 1979 that follows four young, working-class dreamers to a seaside town, where they get into varying degrees of trouble (thanks in part to a crew of marauding Scottish punks) while pursuing modest pastimes like flirting and fixing their broken-down cars and trying to avoid fights with drunken vacationers. A young Ray Winstone, at the center of the ensemble, is a former delinquent with a talent for swimming who just wants to win the local race at the end of the summer. (In short, it’s basically a depressed, ultra-class-aware British version of the feel-good bike-racing movie Breaking Away, which was released about a month earlier.)
It’s not shocking that the movie itself has been lost to time (you can see it on YouTube, at least at the moment I’m writing this), but whoever put together its soundtrack left a true gift to the ages. It’s packed with songs on the spiky-but-sensitive side of the punk spectrum at the precise moment that it began to melt into new wave. Classics and should-have-been-classics abound. Sometimes tinged with acidic sophistication (a pair of songs each by Elvis Costello and Ian Dury) or a precocious wistfulness (Eddie & the Hot Rods’ “Do Anything You Wanna Do”) and sometimes simply leaning into raging hormones (The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks” and Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World”), the compilation makes for a remarkable time capsule: Nearly every song came out in the two years before the movie was released and sounds like something that one of its characters would listen to. The effect is something like discovering a single perfect disc shaken free from a classic Rhino box set, or a night spent listening to John Peel, at the height of his influence, just shrug and play all his favorite songs.
There’s another aspect of That Summer!’s time capsule-ness that defines my experience of the album: I could have easily never heard it. The film has been essentially forgotten. The soundtrack was only ever released on vinyl, which is how I found it — in the bargain bin of one of my favorite record stores in Brooklyn about 15 years ago, the names of somewhat familiar artists running around the border of a blurry photo of Ray Winstone in mid-crawl stroke. I took it home because of the Undertones song, which I’d always heard was John Peel’s favorite of all time. If I’d been digging in another bin, I might have missed out forever.
Not surprisingly, there’s no official version of That Summer! on streaming services, but since most of the songs are available (the only one missing is the Buzzcocks-y “New Life” by the short-lived Scottish group Zones), it was easy enough to put together an unofficial version. Put it on, grab a popsicle from the freezer and find yourself on a rocky British beach circa 1979.
Newsletter continues after sponsor message
A spin around the music stories of the week:
The music world lost one of its most crucial voices this week: the singer and civil rights activist Bernice Johnson Reagon, who helped to found The Freedom Singers in 1962 while a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and later the all-woman a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. Reagon leaves behind an almost incomprehensibly weighty legacy, one facet of which is a 26-part radio documentary about the history of African American music and culture called Wade in the Water that aired on NPR stations in 1994.
One year ago, we were celebrating hip-hop’s first half-century, so it’s no wonder that the time since has been full of artists reckoning with middle age — their own and the genre’s. Two more artists jumped into the conversation via new albums last week: Common and Eminem. NPR Music’s Sheldon Pearce says that the two are searching for answers from opposing angles.
Eminem’s album is all but locked in as next week’s top-selling/streaming release, so take a moment at the end of this week to appreciate the run Taylor Swift has been on atop the Billboard 200 album chart. This week she logged her 12th consecutive week with the No. 1 album in the country, something few have ever managed to do before.
We have a new cohort of Jazz Masters! The NEA announced next year’s recipients of the honor known as the highest in the jazz world, and as WRTI’s Nate Chinen reported, it includes Sun Ra Arkestra bandleader Marshall Allen, fresh off celebrating his 100th birthday; pianists Chucho Valdés and Marilyn Crispell as well as longtime critic Gary Giddens.
Low was a band that almost everyone at NPR Music loved. Over nearly 30 years, the group’s sound was defined by how its two main voices, belonging to the married couple Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk, twisted together in a way that came to feel inseparable. After Parker died in 2022, many of us wondered whether we’d hear Sparhawk’s voice again, and how it would be changed. This week he announced a solo album, White Roses, My God, coming in September, and shared a first single, “Can U Hear.” Sparhawk also spoke with David Hutcheon in The Guardian about making music while grieving Parker, and how that grief forced him to change his musical voice. It’s the best kind of profile of an artist — illuminating but respectful, gut-wrenching and cathartic.
NPR Classical
The Tuba Guru is in ...
Introducing NPR Music+, a new way to support what you love and explore new music and conversations sponsor-free. NPR Music+ includes two podcasts with one convenient subscription: All Songs Considered and Alt.Latino, both sponsor-free. Learn more and support us at plus.npr.org/NPRmusic
You received this message because you're subscribed to NPR Music emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002
