There’s nothing quite like the opening scene of Trainspotting for getting the blood flowing. The deadpan monologue, the feverish chase through Edinburgh streets and, tying the whole thing together, the sheer adrenalin rush of Iggy Pop’s anthemic Lust For Life. So it’s no surprise that when Vue Entertainment commissioned a survey of 2,000 Brits to decide on the Best British film soundtrack, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting topped the list. The survey was conducted to celebrate the reopening of Vue’s iconic venue in London’s West End, and the le cool team, along with Stamp The Wax and Hit The Floor, have compiled a playlist of our favourite British songs from British films.
Our editor (and Suede bassist) Mat Osman talks us through some of the tracks on his list. “In the end it was really hard to get it down to just 25. Even setting ourselves some rules; no music documentaries, no instrumentals and no Beatles, we still had a long-list of 50 or so. Still, listening back there are some great moments; we got to segue Willow’s Song – that haunting piece of Wicker Man horror – into the Happy Mondays’ Hallelujah, and to finally hear Deep Purple and Dudley Moore on the same playlist. There’s one cheat on the list: none of us have seen Baby Driver yet but the more people that hear Young MC’s Know How the better. (And director Edgar Wright has excellent taste – he used Suede’s So Young to great effect in World’s End).
Other oddities; Cilla Black’s Work is a Four-Letter Word is supposedly the track that drove The Smiths to split up, with Johnny Marr saying, ‘That was the last straw, really. I didn’t form a group to perform Cilla Black songs,’ which is a shame because it’s a charming little thing. Mick Jagger’s Memo From Turner features Ry Cooder, who went on to record perhaps the most evocative soundtrack of all time, Paris, Texas. And Dudley Moore’s Leaping Nun’s Chorus shows us that comedy’s gain was music’s loss.
Any way, these are our favourites. You can add your own to the Spotify soundtrack here or share your picks on Twitter using #BestofBritishFilms. I can’t wait to hear what we missed.”
