Greetings and salutations, Twisted Mixtapers!

I’m participating once again this week in Jen Kehl’s Twisted Mix-tape Blog Hop.

Just click her fabulous button here if you want to check out some of the other posts.

This week’s theme is: I wouldn’t love these songs so much if they weren’t part of a Soundtrack. Your favorite songs from soundtracks, could be anywhere from pop music you love to original scores, you decide. Try and use the point of view that it was the Soundtrack that made you love the song.

Before we start, how about some snacks?

Okay!  Everyone has their popcorn?  Great!

My first pick is from the ever wonderful The Sound of Music:

This is certainly one of those songs I never would have loved if it wasn’t part of a movie soundtrack.  I discovered The Sound of Music when I was 13.  My grandparents owned it and I basically forever “borrowed” it from their house.  Myself and one other girl in my class use to run around singing ALL the songs for memory.  Because I was SUPER bad ass at 13 and that’s just something we did.  Oh!  And I wanted to be Liesl – serenaded to under the gazebo. While that never panned out, on the upside, none of my future boyfriends joined the Nazis and tried to arrest me and my family, so I put that firmly in the “win” column.

About the same time as I was belting out all the words to My Favourite Things, I also saw Dirty Dancing for the first time.  And well!  Every girl loves a guy who dances, yes?

I loved this movie for so many reasons.  I wanted to be Jennifer Grey – and know how to dance like that.  And I naturally wanted to be swept off my feet by the forever sexy Patrick Swayze.  And, really, if I can’t be serenaded to in a gazebo, what better way to be wooed than by the “bad boy” (who’s really just misunderstood, dad.  Despite the fact he’s obviously a good chunk older than me, it’s totally appropriate that I sleep with him while on family vacation.  You understand that we’re soul mates and so that makes everything – including that whole little fib to get the money for his dance partner’s abortion – totally fine, right?) taking over the main stage in spontaneous, slightly suggestive, but otherwise traditional, and somehow completely coordinated dance that features … moi!  LIFT!

What?  Right, right!  The soundtrack.  Aside from Time of My Life, I also loved the rest of this soundtrack too.  She’s Like the Wind; You Don’t Own Me; Hungry Eyes….  really, the whole album.

My next pick is from another of my favourite movies from high school: Concrete Blonde’s cover of Everybody Knows from 1990’s Pump up the Volume starring Christian Slater:

This soundtrack gave me a peek into all sorts of music I hadn’t previously considered.  First, I obviously discovered Leonard Cohen – who writes some of the most beautiful music out there.  But the soundtrack had music from the Pixies, Sonic Youth, Cowboy Junkies …

And that’s a nice lead in to my last two choices – which were soundtracks I loved for similar reasons.  It gave me a listen in to music I wouldn’t have bought otherwise.

Next: Jane Siberry’s It Can’t Rain all the Time from 1995’s The Crow starring Brandon Lee.

I have to admit, I have now been re-listening to this soundtrack over the last few days.  There were so many songs I loved on here.  Other favourites were: The Cure’s Burn, Rollins Band’s Ghost Rider and Time Baby III from Medicine.  With the exception of The Cure – who I had already hunted down and loved by this stage, the rest of the artists on the album were new to me and the album as a whole resonated with me in my last year of high school as I listened to it again.  And again. And again.

For my last choice, I’m going to switch genres on you.  As a note, it was hard choosing just five this week as there are any number of other soundtracks I adore: Rocky Horror; Pulp Fiction; Natural Born Killers; Moulin Rouge…  But if I have to narrow it down, here’s my last pick: LeAnn Rimes Can’t Fight the Moonlight from 2000’s Coyote Ugly.

It’s the soundtrack that taught me that I’m apparently a little bit country.  I initially bought it for the retro songs on it: ie: EMF’s Unbelievable and Snap! The Power, but over time the LeAnn Rimes’ tunes really grew on me – especially The Right Kind of Wrong, and well – Can’t Fight the Moonlight.  Since then, country hasn’t been a genre I’ve listened to often, but every now and then I find some great ones and that love stems, I think in part, from this movie and these songs.

So here endeth my visit to the movies.  Until next week!