Making the case for a movie-soundtrack revival

Cruella makes a major addition to what has become Disney’s standard approach to translating its animated library into live-action: The origin story for the 101 Dalmatians villain provides one hell of a soundtrack. The film is absolutely stuffed with vintage pop songs—37 needle drops across its 134-minute runtime. Taken as a whole, they make an excellent case for the concept of the movie soundtrack album. If Disney knows what’s good for it, they’ll be pushing Cruella: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack harder than the Baroness pushes her dressmakers.

The music in Cruella is nothing if not on point. When young Estella is inside a fancy party and being chased by dogs while we see her mother outside the mansion begging for financial help, The Animals’ “Inside—Looking Out” plays. The first time we’re shown Emma Stone as the grown-up Estella, in a montage meant to highlight her colorful life and personality, we get the Rolling Stones’ “She’s A Rainbow” to emphasize that theme. The scene in which Estella gets drunk and redoes her employers’ storefront display window to prove her talents? Set to Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’.” Estella’s first introduction to the world as Cruella De Vil? Suzi Quattro’s “The Wild One.” The montage of Cruella upstaging Baroness time and again? Blondie’s “One Way Or Another.” And so on, and so on.

Cruella, by that measure, makes for an ideal representative of movie-soundtrack synergy, in large part because its uses music in more overt and on-the-nose fashion than James Gunn’s superhero space opera. And like those musical Marvel backdrops, they are elevated and made more vibrant and memorable for first-time listeners by the grand spectacle they accompany. The muddy riffing of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” isn’t always the most grabby of melodies if you’re just skipping through old tracks, but set to a grand, punk-rock-aping fashion runway show with fireworks, flames, and a smirking Emma Stone, the song commands attention. The movie’s version can lead right to The Stooges’ original for curious viewers, and that’s not nothing.

It would be silly to expect a full-blown return to movie soundtracks regularly sitting atop the Billboard charts. But if Cruella can serve as a means of reviving the time-honored soundtrack, even just as a semi-annual appearance, it could help keep deserving music in the ears of the next generation—who can then turn up their noses at the presence of, say, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps” in Cruella 2040.