Bowie, David - 1973 - Aladdin Sane (30th Anniversary Edition)

Ziggy Stardust wrote the blueprint for David Bowie's hard-rocking glam, and Aladdin Sane essentially follows the pattern, for both better and worse. A lighter affair than Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane is actually a stranger album than its predecessor, buoyed by bizarre lounge-jazz flourishes from pianist Mick Garson and a handful of winding, vaguely experimental songs. Bowie abandons his futuristic obsessions to concentrate on the detached cool of New York and London hipsters, as on the compressed rockers "Watch That Man," "Cracked Actor," and "The Jean Genie." Bowie follows the hard stuff with the jazzy, dissonant sprawls of "Lady Grinning Soul," "Aladdin Sane," and "Time," all of which manage to be both campy and avant-garde simultaneously, while the sweepingly cinematic "Drive-In Saturday" is a soaring fusion of sci-fi doo wop and melodramatic teenage glam. He lets his paranoia slip through in the clenched rhythms of "Panic in Detroit," as well as on his oddly clueless cover of "Let's Spend the Night Together." For all the pleasures on Aladdin Sane, there's no distinctive sound or theme to make the album cohesive; it's Bowie riding the wake of Ziggy Stardust, which means there's a wealth of classic material here, but not enough focus to make the album itself a classic.

		1		Watch That Man	Bowie	4:30
		2		Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?)	Bowie	5:07
		3		Drive-In Saturday	Bowie	4:36
		4		Panic in Detroit	Bowie	4:27
		5		Cracked Actor	Bowie	3:01
		6		Time	Bowie	5:14
		7		The Prettiest Star	Bowie	3:31
		8		Let's Spend the Night Together	Jagger, Richards	3:10
		9		The Jean Genie	Bowie	4:06
		10		Lady Grinning Soul	Bowie	3:52
		11		John, I'm Only Dancing [Sax Version]	Bowie	2:45
		12		The Jean Genie [Original Single Mix]	Bowie	4:07
		13		Time [Single Edit]	Bowie	3:43
		14		All the Young Dudes	Bowie	4:11
		15		Changes [live]	Bowie	3:20
		16		The Supermen [live]	Bowie	2:42
		17		Life on Mars? [live/#]	Bowie	3:25
		18		John, I'm Only Dancing [live]	Bowie	2:40
		19		The Jean Genie [live]	Bowie	4:10
		20		Drive-In Saturday [live/#]	Bowie	4:53

¡Aquí!

VA - 2001 - Moulin Rouge OST

At the very least, director Baz Luhrmann has created something different here. His modern-day musical weaves new cover versions of songs from the past three decades into one story about a brothel in turn of the century Paris. Its an odd combination to begin with, and the soundtrack itself bounces back and forth between very hip, modern tracks from artists at the top of their game and big Broadway-style ballads from the cast of the film. Some of the most well-respected names in music signed on for the project, including Beck, Bono, Timbaland, and David Bowie. Fatboy Slim created a "Can Can" for the next generation with "Because We Can," and Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Pink, and Mya teamed up for a surefire hit with their naughtier version of Patti Labelle's "Lady Marmalade." In stark contrast to these edgy tracks, the album spends the rest of its time on love songs from Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman. They perform big-voiced, orchestra-backed versions of sentimental favorites like Elton John's "Your Song." The "Elephant Love Medley" strings together some of pop's sappiest hits, including "Up Where We Belong," "One More Night," and "I Will Always Love You." Perhaps to many people's surprise, Kidman and McGregor can really sing, and maybe in a different environment it would be easier to take these songs seriously, but standing here outside the context of the film and next to Beck covering David Bowie, they seem more comic than creative.

		1		Nature Boy	David Bowie	3:25
		2		Lady Marmalade	Christina Aguilera ...	4:24
Performed by: Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya
		3		Because We Can	Fatboy Slim	3:27
		4		Sparkling Diamonds	Nicole Kidman ...	2:52
Performed by: Nicole Kidman, Jim Broadbent, Lara Mulcahy,
		5		Rhythm of the Night	Valeria	3:49
		6		Your Song	Ewan McGregor ...	3:38
Performed by: Ewan McGregor, Alessandro Safina
		7		Children of the Revolution	Bono, Gavin Friday ...	2:59
Performed by: Bono, Gavin Friday, Maurice Seezer
		8		One Day I'll Fly Away	Nicole Kidman	3:18
		9		Diamond Dogs	Beck	4:34
		10		Elephant Love Medley	Nicole Kidman ...	4:13
Performed by: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor
		11		Come What May	Nicole Kidman ...	4:48
Performed by: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor
		12		El Tango de Roxanne	Ewan McGregor ...	4:43
Performed by: Ewan McGregor, Jose Feliciano, Jacek Koman,
		13		Complainte de la Butte	Rufus Wainwright	3:05
		14		Hindi Sad Diamonds	Nicole Kidman, Joe Leguabe	3:28
		15		Nature Boy	David Bowie ...	4:08

¡Aquí!

VA - 2000 - American Psycho OST

"Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why ... I feel lethal -- on the verge of frenzy," the serial killer Patrick Bateman calmly intones above M.J. Mynarski's gentle piano on the soundtrack from the movie American Psycho. Unfortunately, besides three short monologues from Bateman (played by Christian Bale) interspersed throughout the album, that's as much as you're going to get of the beautiful compositions co-written by Mynarski and John Cale. Instead, the record leans toward the tradition of recent horror flicks like Scream 3 and I Know What You Did Last Summer, where, owing to some undisclosed agreement by the filmmakers, the deranged straight white male's mind seems best cinematically illustrated by loud, ham-fisted goth rock.

There's been some hoopla surrounding the violent nature of American Psycho, but the soundtrack is not without its own drama. Just before the disc's release, Huey Lewis demanded that his "Hip to Be Square" be pulled from the album -- he was offended by the film's subject matter. "Hip to Be Square" won't be missed, but it probably would've served as an okay filler track in this collection of cold '80s cuts and remakes, which range from a smooth touchup on David Bowie's "Something in the Air" to the funktified beats of "Pump Up the Volume" by M/A/R/R/S. The industrial metal band Dope, who did a surprisingly good job on their last album with N.W.A's "Fuck Tha Police," score even better with their sharp guitar cover of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round." Likewise, Massive Attack's Underdog does a superb reworking of The Cure's "Watching Me Fall," and there's a very nice remix job on Eric B. & Rakim's hip-hop classic "Paid in Full." The Tom Tom Club provides the beat-savvy groove "Who Feelin' It," while New Order's "True Faith" holds up as fresh as anything out today.

What's conspicuously absent is a Whitney Houston track. In a bonus monologue at the end of the disc, the killer, Bateman, goes on at great length describing to a prostitute the importance of Houston's debut album and the significance of the lyrics to "The Greatest Love of All."

		1		You Spin Me 'Round (Like a Record)	Burns, Jozzepi Peter ...	2:43
Performed by: Burns, Jozzepi Peter, Percy, David Michael, Stephen Coy,
		2		Monologue		:39
Performed by:
		3		Something in the Air [American Psycho Remix]	David Bowie ...	6:02
Performed by: David Bowie, Reeves Grabrels,
		4		Watching Me Fall [Underdog Remix]	Robert Smith	7:45
		5		True Faith	Peter Hook, Stephen Hague ...	5:54
Performed by: Peter Hook, Stephen Hague, Bernard Sumner
		6		Monologue		:31
Performed by:
		7		Trouble	Daniel Ash	4:16
		8		Paid in Full [Coldcut Remix]	Eric Barrier ...	7:10
Performed by: Eric Barrier, William Griffin
		9		Who Feelin' It [Philip's Psycho Mix]	C Frantz, T Weymouth	4:54
		10		Monologue		1:19
		11		What's on Your Mind [Pure Energy Mix]	Paul Robb, Kurt Velaquen	4:36
		12		Pump up the Volume	Martyn Young	4:08
		13		Paid in Full [Remix]	Eric Barrier ...	3:07

¡Aquí!