Latest news with #soundtrack
Forbes
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Pulp Fiction' Returns To No. 1 Decades After Its Release
The Pulp Fiction soundtrack rockets back to No. 1 on the U.K.'s Official Soundtrack Albums chart, ... More marking just its second time at the top in 1,166 weeks. Director Quentin Tarantino standing by a poster for his film 'Pulp Fiction', London, United Kingdom, 1994. (Photo by) The world is waiting for Quentin Tarantino to make his tenth — and according to him, final — movie. There's no timeline yet for such a project, and the celebrated director and screenwriter has other efforts in the works. As fans of the cinephile await what's coming next from the two-time Oscar winner, one of his greatest successes in the music world becomes a smash hit once again. The Pulp Fiction Soundtrack Hits No. 1 Again The Pulp Fiction soundtrack is a bestseller once more in the United Kingdom this week. The decades-old release rockets from No. 21 to No. 1 on the Official Soundtrack Albums chart. Pulp Fiction has now spent 1,166 weeks on the Official Soundtrack Albums chart, making it one of the most successful releases connected to a film of all time in the country. Somehow, throughout all that time, only two of those frames have been at No. 1. The project originally reached the summit in December 2021, after dozens of stays inside the top 10. Now, it returns to the peak position for just the second time ever. Pulp Fiction Returns as it Rises The same soundtrack also rebounds onto one other tally in the U.K. Pulp Fiction returns at No. 57 on the Official Compilations chart. Unlike on the soundtrack-only ranking, however, Pulp Fiction has not reached No. 1 on the compilations list. Instead, it has thus far peaked at No. 5 and has spent 126 weeks on the tally. The Legacy of the Pulp Fiction Soundtrack Tarantino is not credited as an artist on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, but he was the album's producer, as he likes to have a hand in every aspect of his movies. The project was hugely successful and influential, as it helped reinvigorate interest in old-school American rock, surf music, and other genres. Throughout the years, the soundtrack has been certified triple platinum in the U.K. for moving almost one million units. Kill Bill: Volume 1 Joins Pulp Fiction At the same time that Pulp Fiction becomes a chart-topper again, another Tarantino project can be found on the same ranking. Kill Bill: Volume 1, another hugely popular musical release tied to a hit movie of his, returns to the Official Soundtrack Albums list at No. 33.
Geek Feed
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Feed
Huntrix Don't Miss: K-Pop Demon Hunters Tearing Up the Music Charts
People were expecting Netflix's K-Pop Demon Hunters to have some bops in the soundtrack, and it looks like the movie is definitely delivering on the music front as well. According to @chartsdata, the soundtrack for K-Pop Demon Hunters , the past weekend has earned the album the position of No. 1 on US iTunes, and what's more, the album also got 8.5 million streams on Spotify following the release day. 'KPop Demon Hunters' soundtrack earned its biggest streaming day of all-time on Spotify on June 22 with 8.5 million streams. Its up 500% vs release day. — chart data (@chartdata) June 23, 2025 As it turns out, it actually took a huge team to bring the Huntrix to life on the big screen. Besides the original songs being written by several writers including Danny Chung, IDO, EJAE, Vince, Jenna Andrews, and more; the movie also brought in new singers to record the original songs including EJAE (Rumi), Audrey Nuna (Mira), and Rei Ami (Zoey). We don't know how long the KPDH train is going to run yet, but the movie is currently No. 1 on Netflix, and a lot of people online have been gushing about how it celebrates everything that fans love about K-Pop from the band members having specific personalities to them going on game shows and having fan meets. No sequel has been announced for K-Pop Demon Hunters yet, but the ending does leave fans hopeful for a follow-up, especially with the billboard of Huntrix saying they have a new song/album called Comeback. Some are even hoping that the girls actually get to go on a world tour this time, and maybe they can find Hunters from every other nation—pretty much like what happened with Trolls World Tour . Catch K-Pop Demon Hunters now streaming on Netflix.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The return of the soundtrack: how original movie music made a comeback
Posters for the Brad Pitt Formula One race car drama advertise it, with a heavy dose of cheese, as F1 the Movie. But maybe the Spaceballs-like distinction is necessary, given the existence of F1 the Album, a soundtrack nearly as starry as the movie it accompanies. Maybe starrier: Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon and Shea Whigham probably can't overpower the combination of Don Toliver, Doja Cat, Tate McRae, Ed Sheeran, Rosé, Dom Dolla and Chris Stapleton. This isn't the only recent compilation to bring back the very early-to-mid-2000s moniker of 'the Album'; Twisters: the Album, a 29-track country compilation, reached the Billboard top 10 in the US last summer. Rihanna, a massive pop star who hasn't released an album in almost a decade, put out her first new song in ages on a little record called Smurfs Movie Soundtrack (Music From & Inspired By). (She plays Smurfette in the new cartoon.) Soundtracks, those mainstays of mall CD stores, are back – in streaming and vinyl form. For decades, the idea of pop music soundtrack albums needing a comeback would have been deeply strange; they've been a presence more or less since the late 1960s new Hollywood inflection point of The Graduate, with its foregrounded Simon & Garfunkel hits and written-for-the-film Mrs Robinson. But by the late 2000s, soundtrack albums were perfectly engineered to go down with the music industry ship. For much of the 1990s, the industry did their best to steer music buyers away from cheap, easily attainable singles by often holding them from standalone release and forcing the purchase of a $19 CD for anyone who wanted a copy of a hit song. Soundtracks offered further scarcity, imprisoning non-album tracks that might have once served as B-sides on cheap 7in singles. Hardcore fans might be willing to fork over their money for a particularly good or rare one, getting exposure to some like-minded artists in the bargain. Popular ones could even inspire their own sequels. That said, the bestselling soundtracks ever have tended to be driven by a single artist; Whitney Houston and the Bee Gees may not perform every song on the respective soundtracks for The Bodyguard and Saturday Night Fever, but they're as closely identified with those records as Prince is with his Purple Rain. But there were plenty of commercially successful (and in the cases of films such as Trainspotting or Pulp Fiction, thoroughly well-curated) soundtracks that took a more varied approach. At best, they recreated the movie's whole vibe. At worst, they felt like a mall rat swindle. By the Wind-up Records years, when early superhero movies were often accompanied by compilations of the worst the nu-metal-influenced alt-rock world had to offer (welcome to the used bins, Daredevil: the Album), that compilation approach had lost its charm. Generations of music fans had grown accustomed to downloading, whether illegal or through Apple. While some labels did attempt the old withholding move, making certain single tracks only available with a full-album purchase, it didn't do much good in a post-Napster world. Even as CD prices dropped, the utility of paying $12 or $15 for a bunch of leftovers with the vaguest of theming to a bad Fantastic Four movie somehow lost its appeal. In the 2010s, streaming made the whole album format obsolete for some listeners. And for some, it still is. So how the hell did soundtrack albums, of all things, mount a comeback? Some of it has to do with the resurgence of vinyl, and the increased cachet of physical media as a collector's object more than a practical method of consuming music. Boutique labels have released limited-edition colored vinyl of countless previously obscure movie scores, so it was only a matter of time before that proceeded to cover more mainstream-friendly pop soundtrack albums – in turn incentivizing labels and studios to get together on new versions, not just endless reissues. (No offense, Clueless Original Motion Picture Soundtrack limited edition hot pink LP.) As any touring artist can tell you, there's a lot of money in merch, and not every movie lends itself well to collectible action figures or A24-style knick-knacks. Labels have also found new ways to game a new system, little consolation prizes in the post-apocalyptic music landscape. It's not just generosity of spirit that leads to F1 the Album sporting 17 tracks, or Twisters corralling a whopping 29. Albums with more songs have a chart advantage in the streaming world; it's why Drake records routinely sprawl past the 20-track mark, and one edition of Taylor Swift's last release crested 30. (At the same time, plenty of Disney musicals have reinstated the practice of separating songs from score; the regular edition of the Mufasa soundtrack has a whopping seven tracks, with the film's score available either as a separate album or part of a 'deluxe edition'.) A big, fat sampler of superstar collaborations can also make a movie like F1 feel like a throwback event – a studio's way of signaling: 'Look, this is a real movie, like you used to see. We mean it this time.' Some of these new-fangled soundtracks are able to conjure the actual mood of the movie in question – though if 29 different pop songs really play during Twisters, they fly past with all the impact of a fuzzy radio dial. But maybe super-sized lengths or special-edition packages can serve as easy substitute for those hard-to-recapture vibes. And sometimes a soundtrack really is instrumental to a movie's vibes, after all. Ryan Coogler's recent smash hit Sinners has almost as many songs as a proper musical, and its sprawling soundtrack captures both the blues sound that backdrops its characters' attempt to carve out a juke joint of their own in 1930s America, and the Irish folk tunes wielded menacingly by a group of vampires. The film itself has a very soundtracky sensibility; one of its centerpiece scenes uses the blues as a gateway for a time-bending trip through folk and popular music throughout the ages, transcending the film's 1930s setting. It's a rare case of a soundtrack that works both ways: viewers of the movie can re-immerse themselves in those gorgeous musical sequences with the album, and anyone looking for a preview of the movie's overall time-warped feel (if not necessarily its full visceral power) can check out the songs on Spotify. Not all soundtracks can perform that kind of magic. Will F1 the Album sell a single ticket to see Brad Pitt get his very own Top Gun: Maverick? Probably not; as far as we know, Doja Cat and Tate McRae themselves do not join the racing team. It's entirely possible, though, that it will out-chart any number of buzzy or legacy single-artist albums – and so will that Smurfs album by virtue of boasting that exclusive Rihanna track, just like in the old days. If records can't be fully rescued by colored vinyl and stan loyalty, well, they can sure as hell be further branded on the way down.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘How To Train Your Dragon' Earns Composer John Powell His Biggest Hit Album
John Powell's How to Train Your Dragon debuts on the Official Soundtrack Albums chart and on the ... More Official Album Downloads chart, earning the composer his new career peak. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 07: John Powell attends Universal Pictures presents the Los Angeles premiere of DreamWorks "How To Train Your Dragon" at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on June 07, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by) Since being released in mid-June, How to Train Your Dragon has quickly become one of the highest-grossing movies of 2025 globally. The live-action remake of the animated film of the same name, which was originally released back in 2010, ranks among the 10 most successful titles this year, with more than $370 million earned thus far, and it's still just getting started. The media property is so popular that the music backing the film has also become commercially success in the United Kingdom. John Powell Returns to the Charts John Powell scored How to Train Your Dragon – both the live-action reworking and the original – and this week, he earns a new hit on the charts in the U.K. The accompanying music opens at No. 13 on the Official Soundtrack Albums chart and No. 41 on the Official Album Downloads ranking. How to Train Your Dragon Opens High This week, How to Train Your Dragon secures the top start on the Official Soundtrack Albums chart. Powell's latest effort outpaces M: Son of the Century by Tom Rowlands, the album connected to Death Stranding 2 by Woodkid, and The Ballad of Wallace Island, which is credited to both Carey Mulligan and her co-star Tom Basden. Over on the Official Album Downloads chart, competition is much tougher. On that ranking, Powell is up against all musical acts — not just soundtracks — and How to Train Your Dragon doesn't manage to beat new projects from stars like Van Morrison, The Cure, Queens of the Stone Age, and Neil Young, which all launch in higher positions. John Powell Hits a New Career High Powell earns just his second hit on the Official Album Downloads chart, and he reaches a new career high as a credited artist. In 2019, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World – the soundtrack tied to the animated film's sequel – spent a single frame at No. 51. On the Official Soundtrack Albums chart, the two-time Oscar nominee scores a milestone tenth appearance, though he misses his all-time peak by just one space. Back in 2007, the music Powell created for The Bourne Ultimatum climbed as high as No. 12 — just one position above where he sits now.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The return of the soundtrack: how original movie music made a comeback
Posters for the Brad Pitt Formula One race car drama advertise it, with a heavy dose of cheese, as F1 the Movie. But maybe the Spaceballs-like distinction is necessary, given the existence of F1 the Album, a soundtrack nearly as starry as the movie it accompanies. Maybe starrier: Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon and Shea Whigham probably can't overpower the combination of Don Toliver, Doja Cat, Tate McRae, Ed Sheeran, Rosé, Dom Dolla and Chris Stapleton. This isn't the only recent compilation to bring back the very early-to-mid-2000s moniker of 'the Album'; Twisters: the Album, a 29-track country compilation, reached the Billboard top 10 in the US last summer. Rihanna, a massive pop star who hasn't released an album in almost a decade, put out her first new song in ages on a little record called Smurfs Movie Soundtrack (Music From & Inspired By). (She plays Smurfette in the new cartoon.) Soundtracks, those mainstays of mall CD stores, are back – in streaming and vinyl form. For decades, the idea of pop music soundtrack albums needing a comeback would have been deeply strange; they've been a presence more or less since the late 1960s new Hollywood inflection point of The Graduate, with its foregrounded Simon & Garfunkel hits and written-for-the-film Mrs Robinson. But by the late 2000s, soundtrack albums were perfectly engineered to go down with the music industry ship. For much of the 1990s, the industry did their best to steer music buyers away from cheap, easily attainable singles by often holding them from standalone release and forcing the purchase of a $19 CD for anyone who wanted a copy of a hit song. Soundtracks offered further scarcity, imprisoning non-album tracks that might have once served as B-sides on cheap 7in singles. Hardcore fans might be willing to fork over their money for a particularly good or rare one, getting exposure to some like-minded artists in the bargain. Popular ones could even inspire their own sequels. That said, the bestselling soundtracks ever have tended to be driven by a single artist; Whitney Houston and the Bee Gees may not perform every song on the respective soundtracks for The Bodyguard and Saturday Night Fever, but they're as closely identified with those records as Prince is with his Purple Rain. But there were plenty of commercially successful (and in the cases of films such as Trainspotting or Pulp Fiction, thoroughly well-curated) soundtracks that took a more varied approach. At best, they recreated the movie's whole vibe. At worst, they felt like a mall rat swindle. By the Wind-up Records years, when early superhero movies were often accompanied by compilations of the worst the nu-metal-influenced alt-rock world had to offer (welcome to the used bins, Daredevil: the Album), that compilation approach had lost its charm. Generations of music fans had grown accustomed to downloading, whether illegal or through Apple. While some labels did attempt the old withholding move, making certain single tracks only available with a full-album purchase, it didn't do much good in a post-Napster world. Even as CD prices dropped, the utility of paying $12 or $15 for a bunch of leftovers with the vaguest of theming to a bad Fantastic Four movie somehow lost its appeal. In the 2010s, streaming made the whole album format obsolete for some listeners. And for some, it still is. So how the hell did soundtrack albums, of all things, mount a comeback? Some of it has to do with the resurgence of vinyl, and the increased cachet of physical media as a collector's object more than a practical method of consuming music. Boutique labels have released limited-edition colored vinyl of countless previously obscure movie scores, so it was only a matter of time before that proceeded to cover more mainstream-friendly pop soundtrack albums – in turn incentivizing labels and studios to get together on new versions, not just endless reissues. (No offense, Clueless Original Motion Picture Soundtrack limited edition hot pink LP.) As any touring artist can tell you, there's a lot of money in merch, and not every movie lends itself well to collectible action figures or A24-style knick-knacks. Labels have also found new ways to game a new system, little consolation prizes in the post-apocalyptic music landscape. It's not just generosity of spirit that leads to F1 the Album sporting 17 tracks, or Twisters corralling a whopping 29. Albums with more songs have a chart advantage in the streaming world; it's why Drake records routinely sprawl past the 20-track mark, and one edition of Taylor Swift's last release crested 30. (At the same time, plenty of Disney musicals have reinstated the practice of separating songs from score; the regular edition of the Mufasa soundtrack has a whopping seven tracks, with the film's score available either as a separate album or part of a 'deluxe edition'.) A big, fat sampler of superstar collaborations can also make a movie like F1 feel like a throwback event – a studio's way of signaling: 'Look, this is a real movie, like you used to see. We mean it this time.' Some of these new-fangled soundtracks are able to conjure the actual mood of the movie in question – though if 29 different pop songs really play during Twisters, they fly past with all the impact of a fuzzy radio dial. But maybe super-sized lengths or special-edition packages can serve as easy substitute for those hard-to-recapture vibes. And sometimes a soundtrack really is instrumental to a movie's vibes, after all. Ryan Coogler's recent smash hit Sinners has almost as many songs as a proper musical, and its sprawling soundtrack captures both the blues sound that backdrops its characters' attempt to carve out a juke joint of their own in 1930s America, and the Irish folk tunes wielded menacingly by a group of vampires. The film itself has a very soundtracky sensibility; one of its centerpiece scenes uses the blues as a gateway for a time-bending trip through folk and popular music throughout the ages, transcending the film's 1930s setting. It's a rare case of a soundtrack that works both ways: viewers of the movie can re-immerse themselves in those gorgeous musical sequences with the album, and anyone looking for a preview of the movie's overall time-warped feel (if not necessarily its full visceral power) can check out the songs on Spotify. Not all soundtracks can perform that kind of magic. Will F1 the Album sell a single ticket to see Brad Pitt get his very own Top Gun: Maverick? Probably not; as far as we know, Doja Cat and Tate McRae themselves do not join the racing team. It's entirely possible, though, that it will out-chart any number of buzzy or legacy single-artist albums – and so will that Smurfs album by virtue of boasting that exclusive Rihanna track, just like in the old days. If records can't be fully rescued by colored vinyl and stan loyalty, well, they can sure as hell be further branded on the way down.
