In the case of Redbone, it inspired a Vulture piece entitled “Meet Redbone, the Native American Rock Band Behind That Guardians Of The Galaxy Song,” which betrays its SEO-driven metric by its URL, which actually mistakenly identifies it as “redbone-guardians-of-the-galaxy-end-credits-song,” and a secondary title of “What Band Did Chris Pratt Dance To In Guardians” to cover all their bases ( you can see all the SEO information here).
There are moments where you get excited to hear a song you know well used during a key scene (like “Moonage Daydream”), there are songs that you want to revisit with new ears after seeing them in a new context (like “Hooked On A Feeling,” which previewed the soundtrack’s success when it was used for the film’s first trailer), and there are songs you may not be familiar with but are used in ways that encourage you to find out what that song was (which for me was Redbone’s “Come And Get Your Love,” used in the film’s opening credit sequence).įurthermore, as the film’s box office success came into focus, there was more and more attention paid to the soundtrack as one of its defining elements, likely based around SEO patterns observed by sites that were seeing traffic being drawn to other coverage based on the film’s use of music. Moreover, the music-in the form of the actual cassette mixtape-plays a diegetic role in the film’s storyline, even being positioned as a point of anticipation for the film’s sequel in the midst of its conclusion.
One key element is the music’s integration into the film: whereas franchises like The Hunger Games and Twilight have released albums with songs “inspired by” the films, the Guardians soundtrack is entirely music that is used during the film itself. If we are searching for logic for the soundtrack’s success, we can point to both the film itself and the discourse surrounding it. Given this, the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack offers an interesting case study of how these platforms are being activated by labels like Hollywood Records, and how this jukebox soundtrack is being branded-if not “sold”-in spaces that won’t be counted by Billboard’s album chart. But those audiences are often imagined as those who stream music on YouTube or Spotify, and who could simply create their own playlists featuring the songs from the film without needing to pay out for the album. And while some Twitter conversation among colleagues made a connection back to K-tel-and we could think about Time Life as well-in regards to the album’s appeal to a nostalgia for music of this period, there’s also a wide audience of younger audiences who may not be familiar with some of the songs used in the film. There is no single to drive sales of the album, as the film’s jukebox-style soundtrack relies entirely on songs from the 1970s. 1 are readily available to stream on services like Spotify, or on YouTube. 1, particularly given the fact that the various songs that make up Awesome Mix Vol. This would be a significant accomplishment with or without No. 1 since Mamma Mia! in 2008, and the first for a non-musical since Bad Boys II in 2003. 1 makes it to the summit, it will be the first soundtrack from a summer film to reach No. 1, the soundtrack to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, will be the best-selling album in the United States.
When this week’s final Billboard Hot 200 album chart is released, either the 51 st installment of the Now That’s What I Call Music! series or Awesome Mix Vol.