Judging by the comments in Dan Seitz’s look-back at Roland Emmerich’s 1998 monstrously terrible Godzilla, you guys REALLY don’t like “Come with Me.” It takes a special kind of awful to out-stink Matthew Broderick’s limp leading-man acting and a GIANT LIZARD PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK IN NEW YORK CITY, but there you go. It got me thinking: is the Godzilla soundtrack (featuring a song that’s actually WORSE than “Come with Me,” IMHO) the worst movie soundtrack of the 1990s? With all due respect to “Addams Groove” and “Addams Family Whoomp!” from the Addams Family films, here are the bottom 10.
10. Barb Wire (Barb Wire)
It’s a who’s who of artists that will make you say, “Who?” There’s Johnette Napolitano and Shampoo and Mr. Ed Jumps the Gun and Salt-N-Pepa, who you’ve heard of, but you’ll wish you hadn’t after suffering through “None of Your Business (Barb Wire Metal Mix).” Though that lil’ ditty sounds like “I Want to Hold Your Hand” compared to the Marilyn Manson afterbirth that is Tommy Lee’s “Welcome to Planet Boom.” Here’s hoping Lee and Billy Corgan recorded a new version!
9. Titanic: Music from the Motion Picture (Titanic)
Is it unfair to bash an album that has sold more than 30 million copies, all because this one time, a girl rejected an invitation to dance to “My Heart Will Go On” with me during middle school? No. If anything, I’m doing the world a favor, because if I have to hear Celine Dion’s overwrought ballad one more time, I’m going to burn down a boat. I’d later find out the boat was filled with smugglers and pirates and Billy Zanes up to no good, so you’re welcome, America. And f*ck you, Canada.
8. Psycho: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture (Psycho)
“Psycho: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture…includes three adaptations of Bernard Herrmann’s score to the original by Danny Elfman, with the rest of the album made up of songs by rock, metal, country, trip hop, and drum and bass artists.” That is the Indiana Jones Face Melt of sentences, though I’d pay A LOT of money to hear Alfred Hitchcock’s reaction to Rob Zombie’s “Living Dead Girl.”
7. Hudson Hawk (Hudson Hawk)
Bruce Willis’ tame, talk-sung covers of “Swinging on a Star” and “Side by Side” are still better than the Hudson Hawk video game (but nowhere near as great as The Return of Bruno).
6. Tarzan (Tarzan)
Disney was the king of movie soundtracks for the first half of the decade. They went from Beauty and the Beast to Aladdin to The Muppet Christmas Carol to The Lion King to A Goofy Movie to Pocahontas to Toy Story to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which contains the single scariest Disney movie song ever, “Hell Fire.” I’ll even defend the Hercules and Mulan soundtracks, but things came to a screeching halt with Tarzan, featuring not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE original Phil Collins songs (six if you separate the version of “Trashin’ the Camp” with Rosie O’Donnell from the version of “Trashin’ the Camp” with ‘N Sync.) Collins is perhaps unfairly labeled as the King of ZZZ, but the cotton ball “Two Worlds” and used tissue “You’ll Be in My Heart” aren’t going to convince anyone to the contrary.
5. Super Mario Brothers (Super Mario Brothers)
A common theme for bad 1990s movie soundtracks is giving fans exactly what they don’t want. For instance, on Super Mario Brothers, there are no 8-bit tunes, or even the theme song, which people who haven’t played the video game still know. Instead, we get a bipolar hodge-podge of white boy rap (“I Want You” by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch), metal (“Breakpoint” by Megadeth), instantly dated ballads (“Almost Unreal” by Roxette), and depressing covers (“Walk the Dinosaur” by George Clinton & the Goombas). It’s a mix-tape put together by a mad man with bad taste in music.
4. Deep Blue Sea (Deep Blue Sea)
It has to be included, if only for the tombstone-worthy lines, “Deepest, bluest, my hat is like a shark’s fin” and “Struggling to flow with hemorrhages in your throat/Getting the lap dance while I smash through your boat.” (That same man once wrote “Mama Said Knock You Out.”)
3. Rocky V Soundtrack (Rocky V)
“Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky)” is iconic. “Eye of the Tiger” from Rocky III is immortal. The soundtrack for Rocky V is confusing. The subpar Elton John song, “The Measure of a Man,” makes some sense, unlike the contribution from MC Hammer and the massive amount of hip-hop and new jack swing music. There’s nothing inspiring about a Frank Stallone-written song performed by the 7A3 — the Rocky V soundtrack is the old man at the bar failing to Get With The Youths. So, it’s Frank Stallone.
2. Godzilla: The Album (Godzilla)
The Pacino meets De Niro-esque “Come with Me” gets most of the Godzilla soundtrack vitriol (rightly so!), but don’t forget, the rest of the soundtrack is as unfathomably awful as, well, the Godzilla movie. It begins with the Wallflowers’ misguided cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes,” followed by Puffy Page’s duet and some songs that don’t involve a rapper saying uh-huh over Led Zeppelin samples. Then we get to the Godzooky of songs: “Brain Stew” (The Godzilla Remix).” Oh to be the executive who suggested, “OK, but what if that one Green Day song has random Godzilla roars in it?” That man would later pitch “All the Small Things, Ft. King Kong” before throwing himself off a building.
1. Deep Impact/Bicentennial Man (Deep Impact/Bicentennial Man)
An unlikely choice, but it’s here for a good reason. Behold, one of the single saddest-funniest sentences I’ve ever read on Wikipedia: “Many of the scores used for Deep Impact were recycled and used in Bicentennial Man; which was released in the following year.” To reiterate, the pretty good movie about the massive comet threatening to destroy Earth has the exact same music as the piece of sh*t about Robin Williams as a trash can man. Only the Bicentennial Man himself thinks this is A-OK:
