Soundtrack Your Life

Brian Colburn of the Playlist Wars podcast stops by to talk about the soundtrack to his favorite movie, Tom Hanks' 1996 film, That Thing You Do. The film boasts the infectious award nominated hit single, "That Thing You Do", written by the late Fountains of Wayne / Ivy / Tinted Windows bassist, Adam Schlesinger, who would go on to write for various other films and TV shows, including the Emmy Awar...

Ryan, Brandice and Nicole talk about the soundtrack to the 2006 Marc Forster film, Stranger than Fiction. The soundtrack is the debut of Spoon's Britt Daniel as a soundtrack composer, he worked with Brian Reitzell who was also helming the role of soundtrack supervisor. They chat about the many Spoon songs included in the film, including the song "The Book I Write", which was written specifically f...

Ryan and Nicole break down the 5 nominees for the 2022 Best Original Song Oscar. They talk about how the category has had as few as 2 nominees (2011) in the past and they question whether this year should've had 5 nominees or not. They discuss Diane Warren's winless streak and whether her song for Reba McEntire, "Somehow you Do" will finally get her a statue. From there, they discuss the Van Morri...

Award winning composer and host of the Piecing It Together Podcast, David Rosen joins Ryan and to talk about the soundtrack score to the 2014 Alex Garland film, Ex-Machina.  They discuss how Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury’s score has influenced David’s own score work as well as the rise in  experimental electronic scores and how the duo continues to push in that direction even though Salisbury’s b...

Author of the international best selling books, Excelsior, and Ever Upward, George Sirius shares about how Steve Jablonsky’s soundtrack score to the 2011 Michael Bay film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon has directly inspired scenes in the Excelsior Journey series. While George is a fan of the majority of Jablonsky’s work for Transformers, he explains why the soundtrack score for Dark of the Moon s...

Happy Valentines Day! For this week's episode, Ryan, Brandice, and Nicole talk about a film soundtrack where a character tells another character "This song will change your life." which seems like the perfect film to discuss on this podcast! That's right, we discuss Zach Braff's 2004 film, Garden State, and it's Grammy Award Winning Soundtrack. Ryan and Nicole originally saw the movie in its origi...

David Ballantyne of The Vinyl Score YouTube Channel stops by to chat with Ryan and Nicole about the 1994 Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Pulp Fiction and its triple platinum soundtrack. It's a soundtrack that seemed to be everywhere in 1994 and it opened up a lot of ears to a bunch of different genres of music including surf rock, R&B and classic rock. We start with "Pumpkin and Hunny Bunny" / "Misi...

We kick off Season 3 of Soundtrack Your Life with a very special guest, John Munson of Semisonic. (Also of Trip Shakespeare, The New Standards, Munson Hicks Party Supplies, The Twilight Hours). Instead of talking about one soundtrack, we talk about the different soundtracks that Semisonic has appeared in. While John doesn't have all the details about how the band ended up on every soundtrack, he s...

It's the holiday episode and Austin and Jenn from I Hate Your Taste in Movies stopped by to join Brandice, Nicole and Ryan to discuss the soundtrack to the 2003 Richard Curtis film, Love, Actually. This holiday get together with our friends to The North turned into a bit of a holiday massacre as we pick apart how both the film and the soundtrack haven't aged particularly well. From Bill Nighy's "C...

As 2020 comes to an end, we're ending our season with a B-Sides (outtakes) episode where we showcase some fun conversations that didn't make the final cut or our Soundtrack Your Life Season 1 episodes. We're happy to share clips from our Trainspotting, Baby Driver, Dave Chappelle's Block Party, and Life Aquatic with Stevie Zissou episodes. We would love it if you would join our Patreon membership,...

Brandice Wilson and Nicole Barlow are back to discuss the 2001 Wes Anderson film, The Royal Tenenbaums, and it's much celebrated soundtrack. It begins with the Mark Mothersbaugh score, and from there it ranges from Vince Guaraldi's iconic "Christmas Time Is Here" to Elliott Smith's Needle in the Hay with a lot of great classic and punk rock in between. We talk about the iconic scene of Margot Tene...

Lily and Hannah return as guests to talk about the beloved soundtrack to Cameron Crowe's 2000 Rock'n'Roll classic, Almost Famous. We dive into the early 70s, talking about everything from Alvin and the Chipmunks to Zepplin. With over 120 songs featured in this film, we cover a lot of ground, but we make sure to talk about the fictional band in the film, Stillwater (which is also a real band), whic...

The SYL music composer, Phil Bertulfo and comic writer / horror expert-in-residence, J.M. Brandt, return to talk about Wes Craven’s 1997 slasher film, Scream 2. Why are we covering Scream 2 opposed to the original, you might ask? The soundtrack of course! This soundtrack ranges from D’Angelo covering Prince to The Foo Fighters to… the Kottonmouth Kings? We chat about this diverse and uneven soundt...

Brandice is back to talk about the 1996 Joe Pytka film, Space Jam, and the blockbuster soundtrack that accompanied the film. We manage to spend our time talking about everything from The Quad City DJs "Space Jam" theme to Bugs Bunny's "Buggin", while avoiding talking about that one song by that one very problematic artist. We also discuss how some of the artists featured on the soundtrack had majo...

We're almost done with Season 2 so here's our B-Sides compilation of this season. We have conversations with regulars Brandice and Nicole as well as clips from many of our many entertaining guests. From some of our favorite podcasters to a writer / actor / director triple threat and a horror comic book writer, we've had a lot of great people stop by the podcast this season as we're forever gratefu...

This week we welcome Robert and Steven Sklansky, brothers, and co-hosts of The Simpsons Did It Podcast, to talk about the 1997 soundtrack, Songs in the Key of Springfield, which is the first official Simpsons soundtrack. We chat about all kinds of music from the show, from Danny Elfman's iconic Simpsons theme to the recent Morrisey parody episode, and everything in between. We discuss some of our...

We cover our first horror soundtrack this week with JM Brandt, writer of the upcoming horror comic, Swamp Dogs: House of Crows (Scout/Black Caravan), which comes out in ashcan form this week! We talk about the 1985 Dan O'Bannon horror comedy, The Return of the Living Dead and its very punk, but sometimes not punk soundtrack, which features artists such as The Cramps, TSOL, Roky Erikson, and SSQ. W...

Brandice Wilson and Nicole Barlow are back to talk about the soundtrack to the Stephen Frears film, High Fidelity (2000), and they debate whether the film really qualifies as a romantic comedy or not. We break down the soundtrack and whether all of it works or whether some of the songs are too on the nose even if you look at the soundtrack as a mixtape for the movie. For a film set in Chicago, the...

Austin, from the podcast, I Hate Your Taste In Movies, joins Ryan Pak to talk about the soundtrack to 1982 John Huston musical, Annie, which boasted hit songs such as "Tomorrow" and "A Hard Knock Life" as well as a loaded cast including Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, Bernadette Peters, and Tim Curry. We talk about the negative critical reception that film initially received, including a Golden Rasp...

Ryan Pak, Brandice Wilson and Nicole Barlow discuss the soundtrack to the 1998 Todd Haynes film, Velvet Goldmine, which pays tribute to glam rock through both original songs and covers. We discuss how the movie is more or less based on David Bowie and Iggy Pop, though Haynes couldn't get Bowie to sign off on the film, therefore nixing any use of his music. We talk about the two super groups on the...

Actor/Director/Writer, Peter Gardner returns to the podcast to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1971 Mel Stuart film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and it's soundtrack, which while technically not a musical, it boasts such classic songs as "Pure Imagination", "Candy Man", and the Oompa Loompa songs. All of these songs were written by legendary songwriter, Leslie Bricusse, who has als...

This week, Raymond Luu of Reel Asian Podcast and Ryan Pak cover the Kendrick Lamar curated soundtrack for the 2018 Ryan Coogler film, Black Panther. We talk about the vibrancy of the soundtrack and how Coogler’s request for a couple of songs evolved into an entire soundtrack and how that soundtrack is such a great companion piece to this Oscar nominated MCU film. We cover some of our favorite song...

Ryan Pak, Brandice Wilson, and Nicole Barlow chat about the very 80s soundtrack to the 2017 David Leitch film, Atomic Blonde. We talk how the film's use of these popular songs are used in a way that isn't too on the nose. We break down some of our favorite scenes from the film and Brandice brings up the one scene that she feels falls flat. Brandice also reminisces about almost losing her hearing a...

It's our 25th Episode and we're celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Steven Spielberg's (Indiana Jones and) Raiders of the Lost Ark with actor/director/writer Peter Gardner who brings a wealth of knowledge about the film and it's soundtrack composer, the great John Williams. This is the first time this podcast has covered a soundtrack score by John Williams so it’s fitting that we pick one of h...

Kaytie Ohashi of The Wonderful World of Disney Villains Podcast is our guest this week to talk about the soundtrack to Aladdin, the Broadway musical. We discuss the origins of the musical and compare the soundtrack of the Broadway version to the 1992 animated version, and the 2019 live action adaptation of the film. Kaytie shares about seeing the musical multiple times and we discuss the new music...