Movies, Music and Money, who's on first
By Stephen Holden
The recent slew of heavily hyped tie-ins between would-be movie block-busters and their soundtrack albums underscores some deep changes in the record industry’s artistic and economic philosophy.
These changes began two years ago, when the two-disc soundtracks of Saturday Night Fever and Grease helped give the industry its best year ever. Each album was propelled up the charts by two or three simultaneously-released hit singles: each had vast teenybopper appeal.
“Satuday Night Fever” was the more substantial of the two: in addition to con taining three No. 1 Bee Gees hits, it was a well-balanced anthology of disco songs.
But “Grease” aside from its specially-recorded hit singles. was arranged and performed in the crude style of a TV special. Its production was not state of-the-art: more than anything. it was a deluxe souvenir item.
The success of these albums shook movie people’s fixed notions about the relationship between films and music: If ten million kids would shell out two or three times the price of a movie ticket for a souvenir LP, they reasoned, then a hit soundtrack could be a valuable marketing tool - the perfect bait to hook them on the album’s source.
Similarly. “Fever” and “Grease” challenged the wisdom of the record business promotion practices and the accuracy of its assumptions about the marketplace. The fact that neither soundtrack received much FM airplay called into question the effect on album sales of rock a.o.r. (album-oriented-radio) exposure - the target of much label promotion. The success of these double albums also suggested that purchasers would pay the higher price tag if they perceived what they bought not only as a record, but as a “movie”- an experience- as well.
The phenomenon of “Fever” and “Grease” dramatically demonstrated that pop music was show business first and “art” only incidentally. Realizing this, record companies began thinking of LPs as part of large-scale multimedia projects. Several label executives became involved in the movie business, and an entente cordiale was formed between Hollywood’s old guard and rock’s new money (e.g.. Twentieth Century-Fox and Arista). The products of that entente-which is expanding, what with video music’s high a profit potential - are finally appearing, and with a few qualifications they’re a mediocre lot, even though most of them spell good economic news: With album sales plummeting and rock radio in decline soundtracks are doing better than most artist-oriented records.
But the music on the former suggests a general loss of faith in the latter as an art form: Most of these soundtracks lack a conceptual center and instead rely on one or two hits surrounded by lots of filler.
Though The Blues Brothers movie and The Rose pillage rock and soul for their identities, it is their “stars” who are selling the soundtracks, not their music. “The Rose” album made it on Midler’s screen presence, not on the quality of her Janis Joplin imitation. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd are the Abbott and Costello of the ’80s, who also happen to sing. Roadie purports to be a rock film, but the strongest cuts on its double album are country-oriented.
“Xanadu”, a dizzy fantasy featuring Olivia Newton-John and the Electric Light Orchestra, is a Hostess Twinkie of gimmicky kiddie pop.
The soundtrack of Fame (the movie musical about New York’s High School of Per forming Arts) is a confused mélange of musical styles: only the two numbers by Irene Cara, a junior Donna Summer, stand out.
The notable exception to all of this mediocrity is the two-disc “Urban Cowboy,” which was compiled by knowledgeable rock entrepreneur Irving Azoff and features excellent music by Boz Scaggs, the Eagles, Bob Seger, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt and J. D. Souther, Mickey Gilley, and newcomer Johnny Lee. The album combines Los Angeles, Texas and Nashville styles of guitar-based pop/rock in a package that demonstrates, perhaps unintentionally, the range of white southern American pop. Ironically. “Urban Cowboy” is a lot stronger. and is doing better commercially, than the movie.
Though popular music is central to the story line in the majority of these films, the music itself is treated as only one ingredient in the total dazzling spectacle. Perhaps the quality of the scores makes them deserving of such status.
Nonetheless, record companies have found that they can reap huge profits with these inferior-quality packages because they have a ready-made merchandising tie-in. With the cost of records astronomical and still soaring, developing high-grade musical talent has become a gamble - particularly in the eyes of corporate financiers. The pressure is on to deliver blockbusters, and the resulting media tie-ins are turning the record business into a three-ring circus.