So why is the Adventureland soundtrack on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
OOkay, we need to start with this: Adventureland is one of my favorite movies of all time. I haven’t done a Best 100 Movies Ever project yet, but Adventureland will be way, way up there when that time comes.*
* However, please see the best 100 TV shows ever, which is really fun, I promise!
Adventureland is brilliant in multiple respects – as comedy, as drama, and for its otherworldly performances from an all-world cast – but I think it perhaps speaks most to me because of its setting: a dumpy off-brand amusement park in the summer of 1987.
It’s a grounded romantic comedy, and that resonates with me, a pre-teen during that era who endured having my heart broken by a series of unrequited crushes – with some key moments taking place at a dumpy off-brand amusement park on Long Island, New York.*
* The one of which I speak was actually featured many years later in the taut and jittery Safdie brothers movie, Good Time, which came out in 2017. Good Time stars Robert Pattinson, who co-starred in the Twilight movies and also dated Kristen Stewart once upon a time. Stewart, as it happens, is brilliant in Adventureland. So there you go.
Onward to the fantastic Adventureland soundtrack.
As with some of my other movie compilation soundtracks featured on the best 1,000 albums ever, the Adventureland soundtrack fills in some “gaps” of outstanding songs from the 1970s and 1980s.
A perfect example is “Don’t Want to Know if You Are Lonely,” by Hüsker Dü. I wasn’t hip to it until I saw the movie (which I have subsequently watched many times) and it quickly became my favorite song by the band.
And indeed these days I think of it as a quintessential mid-1980s song. I’m obsessed with its yearning and melodic sound mapped against its driving punk rock energy, and it’s the kind of sound that’s best expressed when you listen to it via cassette tape jammed into the stereo of a beat-up car during a road trip.
What, too specific for you?
Then there’s “Rock Me Amadeus,” by Falco, which I heard a lot during a very specific period of my childhood, and which the employees of the amusement park in Adventureland are constantly subjected to and tortured with.*
* My man Martin Starr, hilarious in TV shows ranging from Freaks and Geeks to Party Down to Silicon Valley, is never better than when he reacts to the umpteenth time he’s forced to listen to “Rock Me Amadeus,” with: “F—ing sadists. F—ing sadists!”
“Don’t Change,” by INXS, released back in 1982 off of Shabooh Shoobah, is a perfect selection as backdrop to the coming-of-age romcom qualities of the movie. And of course it’s just flat out amazing.
More great mid-‘80s cuts that I wouldn’t get an opportunity to highlight elsewhere: “I’m in Love with a Girl,” by Big Star, “Just Like Heaven,” by The Cure, and especially the gorgeous “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” by Crowded House.
I’d add some more, but you know I gotta tell Kell and then meet up with some people at The Razzmatazz.
Some stats & info about the Adventureland soundtrack
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Compilation, Movie Soundtracks, New Wave, Pop Music
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – not rated!
- When was the Adventureland soundtrack released? 2009
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #241 out of 1,000
The Adventureland soundtrack on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from the Adventureland soundtrack that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
I’m curious to know exactly how you are. I keep my distance, but that distance is too far.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.