Best 90s Soundtrack: Clueless
Is Clueless the best movie soundtrack of the 1990s? A self-selected group of people on the Internet say it is so it must be.
That said, it would be classless not to tip a hat to the admitted beauty of the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack. Clueless came within a hairsbreadth of losing to R+J in the 90s Soundtrack Tournament perhaps because they were two families, alike in dignity, or at least alike in that they are from movies based on literary classics you read in high school (Clueless is loosely based on Jane Austen’s Emma).
But whereas how you feel about R+J as a soundtrack is almost inseparable from the movie it’s a part of, Clueless as a soundtrack manages a greater feat: it’s both a part of the movie and a larger comment on the time when it was made.
Clueless has the unfair advantage of being packed with pre-sold wins: a mix of covers, B-sides, and alt takes from the poppier side of mid-90s college radio. It’s perfect for a Saturday night car ride with your friends and safe enough for your mom to find in the tape deck on her way to church the next day. A mixtape of parties, aspirations, and driving with the top down.
Not quite as genre-breaking as the movie from whence it came, the R+J soundtrack still remains the cooler older sister of the pre-adolescent Clueless. She’s passionate (“Lovefool, ”Kissing You”), a little dangerous (“#1 Crush”), a great dancer (“Young Hearts Run Free,” “Everybody’s Free”), and prone to questionable decisions (the Butthole Surfers track). Clueless is for getting past a hangover while Romeo + Juliet is for getting past your ex.
Clueless the movie has a deserved status in the collective memory as one of a string of best-in-the-genre teen films of the 90s. This genre was replete with Upper-Middle-Class White Kids With No Real Problems (Can’t Hardly Wait, 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s All That, American Pie) that served up romantic, literary-derived, status-driven fantasies.
Clueless the soundtrack announces itself with a triptych of California covers, starting with the pop scuzz manifesto of “Kids In America,” The Muffs’ cover of Kim Wilde’s 1980s dance-pop hit. Wilde was British, looking across the pond. Kim Shattuck’s peerless sneer was born in the San Fernando Valley, beckoning curious teenagers to a party where one could dance, grab a beer, and get hit in the head with a clog.
Bakersfield’s own Cracker drops in next with a cover of “Shake Some Action,” originally a mid-70s song from San Francisco’s Flamin Groovies. Where the original was spare, tentative, and jangly, Cracker’s makeover shines and demands attention: a virgin who can’t drive confidently hitting the freeway and changing lanes with ease.
Admittedly, this is where one must acknowledge that the Clueless soundtrack contains a few barneys. Counting Crows’ take on “The Ghost In You” strangles all the angsty, hopeful longing out of the Psychedelic Furs’ original and replaces it with something that has all the charisma of an unplanned open mic night performance by the host.
Other tracks have also aged as poorly as Stacey Dash’s career. The Beastie Boys’ “Mullet Head,” is the first-ever use of the term describing the “business-in-the-front-party-in-the-back” hairstyle. Sadly, its B-side origins are obvious on first listen. Finally, we have World Party’s “All The Young Dudes” cover which…exists.
In between two Katos is a Baldwin: a remix of Luscious Jackson’s “Here.” Labelmates of the Beasties, LJ’s contribution shows up in the movie following the Mighty Mighty Bosstones-fueled raver as a dance-y, groove-packed after-party. After the speedbump that is World Party comes Radiohead’s acoustic treatment of “Fake Plastic Trees,” an anxious, adrift look at love and non-recyclable materials.
The second half of “Clueless” is near-perfect. If “Born To Run” was run through a 90s Liverpudlian filter it would be The Lightning Seeds’ “Change.” If there was a pop-punk book of American standards, “Need You Around” by Chicago’s Smoking Popes would be in it.
“Where’d You Go” isn’t the Bosstones best, but its presence here fulfills the requirements of the Ska Punk Subsidies Act passed by Congress in the mid-90s which propped up the Third Wave economy during a time of extreme monetary fluctuations before leading to the famed Trombone Bubble of 1998. “Dancing guy in a ska band” is a dot-com era job that will never again see the light of day.
Zooming out for a moment, here’s where the Clueless soundtrack provides more of a complete look at the 90s than R+J. The latter is very much a vibe: the abandon of a tortured heart inside a doomed romance. The former functions as a time capsule of the moment, a time when West Coast hip hop sat comfortably at the top of the pop charts – so long as it was sample-heavy enough for white teenagers to groove to – and Britpop could thrive as a friendlier, bouncier alternative to…alternative. Meanwhile, the lines between folk-pop and power pop hadn’t been this blurred since the Paisley Underground.
Coolio’s “Rollin’ With The Homies” is basically a remake of his “Fantastic Voyage,” (itself a near cover of the Lakeside song of the same name) which doesn’t make it any less good.
The lads of Supergrass were young, ran green, and kept their teeth nice and clean.
Velocity Girl’s “My Forgotten Favorite” is probably the most obscure track here, but you wouldn’t know it from its perfect template of shimmery guitars and yearning.
“Clueless” ends with Jill Sobule’s “Supermodel” which is as explosive as her first hit “I Kissed A Girl” was gentle. Opening with a rat-a-tat snare and a screech of feedback, it bookends the soundtrack perfectly with The Muffs’ “Kids” with both setting their own agendas. “There’s a new wave coming, I warn ya,” cautions Shattuck. “I don’t care what my teachers say,” seconds Sobule. These children that you spit on are quite aware of what they’re going through.
One mark of both a good movie and a good soundtrack is how often each holds up to a revisit. Clueless is as much a period piece as any other remake of Jane Austen’s work. But it’s a perfect distillation of the fantasy of a 1990s class-and-status-conscious California. Similarly, its soundtrack is extremely of its time, but it boils down the movie’s love of looks into a series of hooks. The movie wanted to tell us something about the culture around it and without the music, the statement isn’t as strong. You don’t need the movie to appreciate the soundtrack, but the movie would be weaker – and less rewatchable – without it.
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