Twilight Soundtracks

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Sowhether Muse's Supermassive Black Hole often reminds you of that iconic baseball scene, you visited author Stephanie Meyer's website for the premiere of Paramore's Decode or you're just generally feeling nostalgic, the Twilight soundtracks will surely have you reliving feelings of teenage angst.

The Twilight soundtrack was a huge hit, becoming the best-selling soundtrack in the US since Chicago and receiving a Grammy nomination. Rock band Paramore wrote the lead single Decode for the album, which premiered on Twilight author Stephanie Meyer's website and won a Teen Choice Award.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon's soundtrack comprises entirely of original songs exclusive to the soundtrack, once again performed by a selection of indie and alternative rock artists. Death Cab for Cutie wrote and performed the lead single this time, which was titled Meet Me on the Equinox and premiered at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

To truly date this film, the soundtrack for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse was released in an all-day reveal event on MySpace in May 2010. Muse returned once again, this time contributing the lead single Neutron Star Collision (Love is Forever) which reached number 11 on the UK Singles chart.

The first not to feature any Muse songs, the soundtrack for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 nonetheless saw two singles released: It Will Rain by Bruno Mars, and A Thousand Years by Christina Perri. It Will Rain was released exclusively on iTunes and reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, while A Thousand Years has received over two billion views on YouTube where it is a popular cover song.

The final soundtrack for The Twilight Saga featured the likes of Ellie Goulding, St Vincent and James Vincent McMorrow, with Green Day providing the lead single The Forgotten. Christina Perri's A Thousand Years from the previous film's soundtrack was re-recorded with vocals from theatre star Steve Kazee and appears in the end credits.

How many movies boast soundtracks that can maintain cultural relevance for a decade, if not longer? If the Twilight series is any indication, the answer is at least five.

More than a decade ago, Twilight fever gripped America. The book series became massively successful, and then the stories were quickly adapted into a film franchise. Those movies produced a handful of soundtracks that were hugely popular at the time, and which are apparently still beloved to this day.

The first Twilight soundtrack breaks back into the top 10 on the Top Album Sales chart this week, landing at No. 7. The The Twilight Saga: New Moon album appears at No. 13, sitting just below the highest tier.

Such healthy sales figures are also enough to push both Twilight and The Twilight Saga: New Moon to several other rankings. The bestsellers reappear on the Billboard 200 and the Soundtracks lists. They also both manage to debut on the Vinyl Albums tally this frame.

Sensitive young men who avoid sunlight and the gloomy misfit young women who adore them: For all the gasps that greeted Twilight author Stephanie Meyer's recent embrace of indie rock, the parallels between the two are obvious enough. On different scales, each has seen its financial fortunes rise the past few years as well. The music industry's troubles are widely known, but indie's stock continues to climb. Phoenix and Animal Collective are two of the year's breakout bands. Jay-Z endorsed Grizzly Bear. Sonic Youth went on "Gossip Girl". As reverse indicators of indie rock's increasing popularity, there's the backlash: Slate recently slamming NPR and praising Creed, or recent underground interest in commercial dead ends like lo-fi and glo-fi.

Hollywood has hit up Brooklyn before. New Moon's soundtrack is melancholy and nocturnal, as befits the book where Edward leaves protagonist Bella for her own good, but it repeats some mistakes from past indie OST close-ups. Yeah, of course, indie rock is "just" pop music, but the companion CDs to Garden State, and TV shows such as "The O.C.", "Gossip Girl", and "Grey's Anatomy" (all at one time helmed by New Moon music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas) over-emphasized indie's adult-contemporary streak. By contrast, the Slumdog Millionaire, I'm Not There, and Sofia Coppola film soundtracks work partly because they share the same restless disregard for boundaries that indie listeners-- ideally, at least-- aspire toward.

Despite being the soundtrack to a young adult drama, the New Moon album alas leans toward the adult contemporary. It's packed with indie-friendly royalty, but hardly anybody here sounds anything better than pleasant. As usual, Thom Yorke fares best: The jittery synth-rock of the Radiohead frontman's "Hearing Damage" shows more of the heart he moved to his sleeve this year on gorgeous cover "All for the Best", and then an atmospheric outro steals it away again. Grizzly Bear's "Slow Life", with Beach House singer Victoria Legrand, and Bon Iver's "Roslyn", with St. Vincent-- both welcome collaborations on paper-- unfortunately fade into ethereal acoustic wallpaper: vaguely pretty, too unremarkable to have noteworthy flaws.

In the battle of the potential radio anthems, Death Cab for Cutie's chiming rocker "Meet Me on the Equinox", with its propulsive Narrow Stairs bass and hugely obvious "everything ends" chorus, beats the nonsensical baroque-pop of the Killers' "A White Demon Love Song". Lykke Li's feedback-streaked piano ballad "Possibility" is a relative bright spot, but like the rest of the tracks here, it pales in comparison to the work on her own records.

Elsewhere, Editors could finally rid themselves of Interpol comparisons with oppressively maudlin cabaret crooner "No Sound But the Wind", but you'll only wish there were no sound. A New Moon remix of Muse's histrionic "I Belong to You" mercifully cuts the pain of the six-minute album version in half, with few other apparent improvements. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's smoky acoustic lament "Done All Wrong" is probably too hard on itself. The few uptempo tracks here-- the chord-crunching "Monsters", by former Longwave frontman Steve Schiltz's Hurricane Bells, or the wobbly Saddle Creek-ishness of L.A. band Sea Wolf's "The Violet Hour"-- are as overly familiar as they are toe-tapping.

The New Moon OST has all the touchstones of what is considered, by many who consider themselves cognoscenti, "good" music-- from Yorke to Grizzly Bear to the more populist Death Cab, Killers, and Muse-- but it uses its tastefulness to solidify the borders of what is acceptable, not to broaden them. Even New Moon's most adventurous musicians rarely do anything catchy, startling, or moving enough here not to blend into mostly forgettable gothic-romance slurry. Strange as it may seem, not blending in is what some people want. Catchy is what pretty much everybody wants. So indie boys and vampires may have in common their unhealthy pallor, their emotional sensitivity, and their romantic clumsiness, but they're not the same, after all. Believe it or not: Indie kids have souls.

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There are the Twilight books, the Twilight movies and then there is the music. For Stephenie Meyer, the author of the Twilight series, music (particuarly alternative rock) was always an important part of her writing process. For fans of the books and films, the music on the soundtracks adds another layer to experiencing the stories and characters but there is plenty to love and enjoy for non-fans too. The Twilight soundtracks have quickly become showcases for the best bands in the alternative rock and indie rock world. They are not just teen film soundtracks but really great mix cds featuring such music artists as Sia, Thom Yorke, Death Cab for Cutie, Iron & Wine and Band of Horses, just to name a few. Check out what you are missing!

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