(drive Original Movie Soundtrack

ABBA’s incredible songbook gets another workout, this time for the soundtrack to Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the sequel to the popular movie from 2008.

ABBA hitmaker Benny Andersson produced and arranged the soundtrack, which features 18 classics performed by the film’s all-star cast which includes Cher and Andy Garcia alongside returning stars Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and many more.

Primetime Emmy Award winner Bear McCreary is considered to be one of the most versatile composers in the industry. Outlander has been nominated for five Golden Globes and McCreary has received an Emmy Award nomination for ‘Outstanding Music Composition for a Series’. McCreary is recognized for his soundtrack for the hit film 10 Cloverfield Lane. For his score, Time Magazine raved “The movie’s finest feature may be Bear McCreary’s playfully malicious score, a beehive of worried-sounding strings that channels the spirit of Hitchcock fave Bernard Herrmann.”

When the new Halloween movie hits theaters in October 2018, it will have the distinction of being the first film in the series with creator John Carpenter’s direct involvement since 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Carpenter serves on the new David Gordon Green-directed installment as an executive producer, a creative consultant, and, thrillingly, as a soundtrack composer, alongside his collaborators from his three recent solo albums, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.

Joel Schumacher's 1987 film The Lost Boys capitalized on a temporary lull in horror movies in the late '80s and created a heavily music-video-influenced vampire homage with enough campy humor, heavy metal costumes, and hunky stars to put a fresh spin on the genre. An amusing piece of eye candy spiked by a few creepy moments, the movie, in typical '80s style, relies heavily on the soundtrack to bolster its emotional core. The soundtrack, like the film, works great on the surface – but don't go much deeper. A mix of covers and bombastic '80s pop originals, the songs work best when they concentrate on the horror factor. Echo & the Bunnymen turn in an excellent cover of the Doors' "People Are Strange" that has a bouncier, more melodic touch than the original. Jimmy Barnes and INXS' "Good Times" is an energetic rocker used to personify the party-hardy SoCal atmosphere of the film. The strongest song is the movie's theme, "Cry Little Sister," a goth-influenced midtempo ballad.

For fans of Jerry Goldsmith's score for Ridley Scott 1978 movie Alien, this two-disc Intrada set is the ultimate fantasy. Everything is here and then some. Disc 1 contains Goldsmith's entire score as he originally intended it with every cue in place, including those that were later cut from the film plus his recomposed versions of cues the director made him change (Goldsmith's original main theme, for example, appears without its signature heroic trumpet melody because the director thought it wasn't creepy enough). Disc 2 includes the original soundtrack as issued on LP plus six other bonus tracks of demonstration takes and even the brief except from Eine kleine Nachtmusik used in the film. The stereo sound here is fabulous, the performances definitive, and the liner notes exhaustive. And the score, like the film, is a classic of its genre. With its mixture of the ecstatic chromaticism of Scriabin, the skittering strings of Penderecki, the harmonic waves of Ligeti, and the atmospheric percussion of Herrmann, Goldsmith's score became a template for all subsequent science fiction/horror movies. But as this splendid release so amply shows, the original still can't be beat.