Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Ennio Morricone’s work on The Hateful Eight aside, most of Quentin Tarantino’s movies famously don’t have much in the way of traditional scores. The songs that have played a starring role in so many of his iconic scenes aren’t original compositions—they’re vintage gems, often dug up from the crates by the director himself. The music from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, captured on this soundtrack, is a prime example. Like the film itself, the songs—from José Feliciano’s cover of “California Dreamin’” to Vanilla Fudge’s take on “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”—are a time capsule of late-’60s Los Angeles, tracks Tarantino himself heard on the radio growing up in the city’s South Bay region (although there are, as usual for the director, lots of deeper cuts, like The Box Tops’ “Choo Choo Train”).

Since The Big Chill, too often directors and film producers have taken the easy way out in creating soundtracks for their big-budget Hollywood movies by licensing a couple handfuls of hits either from the catalog of yesteryear's pop giants or from hungry up-and-comers. It's a formula almost. Thankfully there are still film scores, though they all seem to be written by the same five men. Both of these poles sees to lie in stark contrast to Robert Rodriguez's approach to creating an audio environment both to accompany and stand apart from his films. On Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Rodriquez took matters into his own hands and procured a series of rather obscure existing tracks that viscerally underscore defined themes in his movie – such as Juno Reactor's "Pistolero," Brian Setzer's ass-kicking "Malagueña," and Manu Chao's "Me Gustas Tu." He also commissioned several tracks to actors and wrote others for his players. Thus Tito Larriva's haunting "Flor de Mal," or Johnny Depp and friends under the moniker Tonto's Giant Nuts offer "Sands Theme," while Rubén Blades and Antonio Banderas helped to flesh out their own character's themes musically as well as dramatically.