If a movie doesn’t want to have a traditional score, or if it doesn’t want to just rely on a traditional score, then it might opt to have a soundtrack. The difference, at least for present purposes, is that a soundtrack is compiled of pre-existing songs, or sometimes covers of such songs recorded for the movie, rather than a score that someone like, say, John Williams composed for Star Wars, or Ennio Morricone composed for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, to just rattle off a couple of all-time great/iconic scores.
Soundtracks are different. If you want great soundtracks, and soundtracks that really suit the movie they belong to, then the likes of Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction have got your back, and if you want a great score and a great soundtrack at the same time, 1983’s Scarface does a bit of both. Anyway, good soundtracks aren’t the focus of the ranking below. These soundtracks contain bad music, or misused music that’s usually good when divorced from the context of the movie. It was a bit hard to find only soundtracks compiled of bad songs, so soundtracks with inappropriate or cynically thrown-in songs are also included below, and will be specified accordingly.
7
‘Godzilla’ (1998)
Image via TriStar Pictures
This is an easy and kind of petty pick. Maybe it’s not the best idea to start with something petty, but whatever. Godzilla (1998) sucks, and any opportunity to talk about Godzilla (1998) sucking must be seized. What a wonderful series Godzilla is, or at least can be, and what a thoroughly awe-inspiring misunderstanding of it is Godzilla (1998). It’s mind-bending how bad it is.
Because of the mind-bending awfulness, the soundtrack is just one small layer in what’s an overall terrible-looking and tasting cake, but, again, any opportunity to be a hater must be embraced. You get a disappointing cover of the usually incredible “Heroes” (the David Bowie song), a misused Rage Against the Machine track, and then the foul-smelling icing on the whole terrible cake: a P. Diddy song called “Come with Me.” It is, regrettably, true. It is a sentence that hurts to type, and a fact that feels so wrong, but it’s here, and it’s a part of the whole awful soundtrack. Like anyone ever needed another reason to stay the hell away from 1998’s Godzilla.
6
‘The Room’ (2003)
Image via TPW Films
If you want to try and single out the almost redeeming elements found in The Room, you could highlight the honestly (and weirdly) iconic score by Mladen Milicevic. If it’s not good in the traditional sense, then it’s ultimately solid and memorable in a way that the rest of the movie kind of falls short of being, at least intentionally. Like, the score is better than the writing, directing, acting, and everything else.
But on top of the instrumental score, you’ve also got some songs featured in The Room, most of them underscoring the infamous (and needlessly long) sex scenes, with those songs honestly adding to the unintentional comedy and/or discomfort of such scenes. So, they’re necessary to The Room‘s being the wonderful disaster that it is, but they’re also fairly bad songs… and even if you hear them out of context, somehow you’re likely to be reminded of the scenes they back, which probably isn’t something you want to remember.
5
‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ (2022)
There are problems beyond just the music in Thor: Love and Thunder, and some of them have even been acknowledged by those involved with its production. Maybe in an attempt to distract from the generally ugly visuals, Guns N’ Roses needle drops were prominent throughout, a little too aggressively, with “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” “Welcome to the Jungle”, “Paradise City”, and “November Rain” all heard here.
The insistence on having Guns N’ Roses song after Guns N’ Roses song feels hollow and desperate in this overall hollow and desperate superhero film.
It’s a little in line with Thor: Ragnarok‘s prominently featuring Led Zeppelin‘s “Immigrant Song,” yet that song worked in that context musically and lyrically. The insistence on having Guns N’ Roses song after Guns N’ Roses song feels hollow and desperate in this overall hollow and desperate superhero film. Those Guns N’ Roses songs are all good too being easily among the band’s best but they just don’t really fit or feel earned here making them sound honestly quite bad in this context. Or in this lack of context. What a mess of a movie.
4
‘Sky High’ (2005)
