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Baby driver soundtrack in order3/31/2024 It kicks off in the same way as the movie - with the timeless and chaotic “Bellbottoms” - before running through a mess of obscure and funky tracks like The Incredible Bongo Band’s “Bongolia” and better-known cuts like the Simon & Garfunkel song that lends the movie its name. While the songs don’t carry the same wallop when removed from Edgar Wright‘s timely edits and Elgort’s fancy driving, the director didn’t exactly pick songs that slouch to soundtrack his high-energy mashup of a heist movie. Two guesses as to where you’ve heard “The Edge” before. The movie and its soundtrack are a primer on sampling as art, as evidenced by the fact that Wright leans toward tracks that have become famous after others sampled them. And if you want to put yourself back in Ansel Elgort’s iPod-assisted zen-driving headspace, now you can. And Baby Driver took those lessons out of outer space and straight to heart, leaning even more heavily on soundtrack-as-plot-point to thrilling and roundly adored effect. The movie doesn’t hit as hard as Shaun or The World’s End, but we’re always invested in Baby and his struggles.Guardians Of The Galaxy proved that audiences really enjoy everything being a mixtape, even their movies. While we care about Baby and Debora and want to see their relationship succeed, the movie is constantly trying to juggle a major cast and at times seems to focus on Baby’s character arc with Debora representing a goal rather than a fully-formed person, although James does the best she can with the screentime she has. If I have one criticism of Baby Driver, it’s that it never quite reaches the emotional impact of Wright’s previous films. I walked out of Baby Driver immediately planning to buy the soundtrack, and then got mad that it wouldn’t be available for two more days. Hell, the movie kicks off with “Bellbottoms” by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, not exactly a track you’d hear blasting in regular rotation on your local radio station. Yes, there are some songs that are incredibly on the nose like “Nowhere to Run” by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, but it’s also a soundtrack packed with largely unknown tracks. It’s a personal vision realized through music and sheer personality.įurthermore, the soundtrack for Baby Driver is par for the course with Wright, packed with deep cuts and songs most people won’t know. In an age where there’s an arms race to see who can cram the most amount of CGI into a movie, Wright is hanging his hat on music, practical stunts, and sound design (a side note: if Baby Driver doesn’t get nominated for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing, those Oscar categories are meaningless). The amount of timing and choreography to pull off this kind of filmmaking is rare, and it deserves to be celebrated. And even in these moments, the music is always there, but it doesn’t dominate like it needs to when Baby is on a job.įor some, this reliance on music or the need to use it to dictate everything may seem overcooked, but Wright’s craftsmanship is undeniable. But it also creates a bubble where he’s incredibly lonely, able to relate only to his deaf foster father Joseph ( CJ Jones) or Debora. On the one hand, Baby needs sound and music to relate to just about everything whether it’s remixing conversations he’s recorded or getting a beat from ambient noise. He’s showing us something that’s both beautiful and tragic about his protagonist. By using music as a way to tell us about character and emotions, Wright isn’t simply doing cool stuff with the soundtrack (although what he accomplish is certainly spectacular in more ways than one).
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