Every week, a different FADER staffer compiles a playlist for our our Spotify app, where it lives alongside GEN Fs from our archives and playlists for each issue. This week, to psych ourselves for the Oscars, it’s our new staff writer Patrick D. McDermott picking some of his favorite songs from 2013 movie soundtracks.
The Oscars air on March 2nd, and the four "Best Original Song" nominees are whatever. I like "Moon Song," the sparse lullaby that Karen O and Spike Jonze wrote for the Her soundtrack, and I'm looking forward to hearing her sing it next weekend. My dream version of that performance, though, would be Joaquin Phoenix sitting next to an empty chair while Scarlett Johansson sings from someplace else, her voice projected through tiny iPhone speakers. Until that happens, I'll listen to this playlist, a collection of some of the most poignant, memorable, and unexpected soundtrack highlights from films released in 2013. The Wolf Of Wall Street made some bizarre choices (The Lemonheads' cover of "Mrs. Robinson"?), Greta Gerwig payed tribute to Leos Carax by dance-sprinting through Lower Manhattan to "Modern Love" in Frances Ha, and Cate Blanchett's character in Blue Jasmine had multiple psychotic episodes to the tune of "Blue Moon." Probably the best—and definitely the weirdest—soundtrack moment at the movies last year was James Franco as Alien, serenading the girls of Spring Breakers with Britney Spears' bummer ballad "Everytime." The original version of the song comes in afterward, while Alien and the girls commit a string of robberies; it's a disorienting, darkly funny, slow-motion bloodbath.
