Which 90s Teen Movie Had the Best Soundtrack?

It’s mid-July, which means we’re fully in the throes of summer. The threat of the novel coronavirus may not be over quite yet, but that sure will never stop me from diving deep into the trashy pop culture fixations of my youth, as I’m sure you all have gathered at this point in our relationship. If there’s any genre of movie that defined lazy summertime days, waiting for my friends to come over so we could all carpool to the smelly waterpark with the one cool slide, it’s 90s TEEN MOVIES, and because they’re my parents’ bread & butter (I feel reasonably certain they saw all these movies in the theater as they came out and we had a shit-ton of the soundtracks on CD), I’m intimately familiar with a whole lot of them.

And even though many of these movies may not have aged amazingly (I recently was distinctly disappointed upon revisiting, say, Dude, Where’s My Car?), I sure can’t discount that some of these movies featured absolute bops on the soundtrack— hell, some of these movies were arguably produced entirely to sell the soundtrack! So if that was a goal, you had to be sure that you were putting together what was, essentially, a killer mixtape: a decent balance of radio-friendly hits to attract and satisfy the normies, and deeper cuts from cult bands to encourage dedicated fans to scoop up the CD so they could own a track they would otherwise never hear.

So let’s dig into ‘em!

CLUELESS (1995)
Obviously Clueless is one of the greatest films ever made, and potentially the cinematic opus of the 1990s, but how does its soundtrack stack up? You’ve got pop-punk-ified versions of classic songs like The Muffs doing “Kids In America” (great!) and forgotten British indie band World Party putting their own spin on Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes” (meh). You also have some of the earliest glimpses of the third-wave-ska world takeover of the late 90s with massive cuts like Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ “Where’d You Go?” and the indelibly perfect pop song that is No Doubt’s “Just A Girl.” Throw in some gentle faux-hipster cred with cuts from the Beastie Boys and an acoustic Radiohead song, and you’ve got yourself a winner, right? I’d love to be a contrarian and say no, but there’s just too much good stuff on here, including Luscious Jackson (coexisting with the Beastie Boys, no less!), one of the best Cracker songs, a slice of power-pop genius from Supergrass, a killer Coolio joint, and even tolerable submissions from the likes of the Counting Crows. Oh, yeah, and a fucking Smoking Popes song! This was 1995, so this might have been the very first time anyone from outside the greater Chicago area had ever heard of them!

DAZED & CONFUSED (1993)
Dazed & Confused might very well be one of my all-time favorite movies, and much of that has to do with its soundtrack, which is a collection of some of the best dad rock ever recorded. Like, people love to shit on classic rock, but how can you watch this movie and not vibe with how well these tracks match the atmosphere? Especially since Richard Linklater took great care to choose some of the only non-sucky songs these bands ever put out (like Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion”), or delightfully sucky songs that make perfect sense in the context of the movie (Nazareth’s “Love Hurts”). You’ve got two of the best Alice Cooper songs in “School’s Out” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy” (shame they couldn’t have gone for the hat trick of “I’m Eighteen,” but Freaks & Geeks would avenge this miscarriage of justice soon enough), perhaps the best-ever usage of “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” by War (which plays, conveniently enough, in the aftermath of what is potentially my all-time favorite Parkey Posey performance), fucking “Free Ride” by Edgar Winter (!), Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” and a usage of “Rock & Roll All Nite” that somehow doesn’t make me want to punch Gene Simmons in the face. I don’t really smoke weed at this point in my life but this soundtrack almost always makes me wanna fire up a joint.

EMPIRE RECORDS (1995)
Time has bestowed mixed blessings upon Empire Records, a movie whose initial script seems to have a ton of promise and is populated with some of the most likable actors and characters in 90s cinema (Mark! Lucas! Deb!), but which was clearly defanged by studio interference and then strangled by lackluster support. Its cult following, of which I am a part, seems to love it for the movie that it could have been, rather than the flawed movie that it actually is. But one thing that isn’t flawed is the soundtrack, which is just full of gems. If you can think of another movie that could effortlessly include songs from GWAR, Suicidal Tendencies, Adolescents, Dire Straits, Gin Blossoms, and the fucking Buggles (!), then I beg you to show it to me; if nothing else, the sheer variety in the quality tracks on display here goes the longest way towards establishing this movie’s record-store-employee cred. (I was among many that was convinced to work at a record store after growing up on this movie and High Fidelity, although my experience in Chicago was seemingly much more positive than many others’.)

AMERICAN PIE (1999)
I am pretty sure this movie literally is pop-punk, to a violent extent, not least because blink-182 themselves make a cameo (although Travis Barker is mis-credited as Scott Raynor and the song chosen for the soundtrack is “Mutt,” which is objectively the worst song on Enema of the State). Unfortunately, the soundtrack surprisingly… sucks? I think it’s really funny that the hardcore-adjacent band Shades Apart managed to land a good track here, but the tracklist includes also-rans like Dishwalla (not even the one tolerable Dishwalla song) and terrible cuts from bands like Sugar Ray, Goldfinger (who were capable of so much better), and Tonic. The soundtrack also commits the cardinal sin of including the wrong Third Eye Blind song— here we have “New Girl,” when in fact, the final scene of the movie includes “Semi-Charmed Life,” which would have been so much of a better pick. And don’t worry, I’m not going to get into Barenaked Ladies apologia anytime soon, but like, it’s weird that they didn’t put “One Week” on the soundtrack itself, right? That’s what the credits fucking roll to! In fact, there’s like a million and one great songs that were in the movie but weren’t put on the soundtrack— Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta,” Hole’s “Celebrity Skin,” “Going to Hell” by the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and perhaps most upsettingly, Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.”

CRUEL INTENTIONS (1999)
Man, where to begin with this one? A modernized update of Dangerous Liaisons (no, I refuse to write out the original name of the French novel), this movie has it all: Sarah Michelle Gellar during her 1997-1999 peak (besides Buffy, there’s also her great turns in Scream 2 and I Know What You Did Last Summer), Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair, and also, um, borderline-incest. Future Pornhub demographics aside, the soundtrack here also holds up miraculously well: excellent cuts from Placebo and Marcy Playground, one of the absolute best Blur songs, a tolerable Counting Crows joint (they sure made the rounds on this circuit, huh?), a fucking Aimee Mann cut… But the standouts here are, clearly, Fatboy Slim’s masterpiece “Praise You” (which still gets me pumped no matter how many times I hear it in the supermarket) and of course, the closer, “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve. For being a six-minute song, that track goes by in a beautiful flash, and I can’t think of a more fittingly melancholy tone to end this intrinsically late-90s collection of songs on.

ROMEO + JULIET (1996)
This soundtrack is special to my family in part because Des’ree’s “Kissing You” is my parents’ “song,” which is just so precious and sweet, but upon revisiting it, I’m actually pretty stunned at how many great cuts there are here. Of course, you have “#1 Crush” by Garbage and “Local God” by Everclear, which are representative of those acts’ power pop credentials at the absolute peak of their powers, but they blend in perfectly with lower-key cuts like the absolutely ethereal “Lovefool” by the Cardigans and one of the least-boring Radiohead songs, “Talk Show Host.” I also have to give a soppy, over-the-top Shakespeare adaptation released with a huge mainstream marketing push credit for including a phenomenal late-era Butthole Surfers song, although the cut chosen (“Whatever”) is probably one of their most-accessible, least-violently-weird outings (even in the context of 1996, which is when they released their one mainstream record, ElectricLarryLand).

SCREAM (1996)
I could talk about Scream, which is almost inarguably the best horror movie of the 90s, ad nauseam, but one of the best and most unique things about it (at least before it got ripped off to the point of Scary Movie feeling like a parody of a parody of a parody) is how much it also accurately feels like a 90s teen movie on top of being a top-tier slasher. Unfortunately, the majority of the soundtrack here is best used within the movie itself, rather than as standalone songs, but there are some delightful splashes of color here and there: a wonderfully eerie cover of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”; the best Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds song, “Red Right Hand”; and an excellent, punky, post-grunge song called “Youth of America” by a band called Birdbrain who, as far as I know, never went on to do anything else of note. You’ve also got a forgettable Moby track and a dreadful Alice Cooper cover, but I’ll always come to defense of Soho’s “Whisper to a Scream,” which is the sunlight-spackled, effervescent pop song that the credits roll to, and provides the perfect cherry of levity on top of the dark climax of the movie, which is part of what makes it such an enduring Comfort Horror watch for yours truly.

CAN’T HARDLY WAIT (1998)
Fuck, dude, it might not even be fair to talk about this one: the soundtrack is just so fucking stacked, and although I love this movie, goofy dated corny charm and all, the soundtrack is probably better than the film itself. First off, you have the absolutely legendary Replacements song that the movie is named after, but you’ve also got “Graduate,” which is one of the top 5 best Third Eye Blind songs, a sorely-underlooked Smash Mouth cut (I might be entering my next, significantly more powerful phase as a Smash Mouth defender), some nice throwbacks with “Paradise City” (one of the few good Guns N Roses songs) and Run-DMC’s “It’s Tricky,” and some fantastic late-90s nostalgia pop bops from Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliott. Of course, though, I can’t neglect to mention the inclusion of blink-182’s “Dammit,” which is maybe the best song of all time, and its usage in the movie itself is perfect, so maybe that makes Can’t Hardly Wait the winner here by default?

So with a winner officially chosen… I think that’s it. What about you? What are your favorite 90s movie soundtracks? Are you mad that I didn’t talk about She’s All That or 10 Things I Hate About You (both wonderful films, but Romeo + Juliet met my theatrical adaptation quota)? Where are my Jawbreaker and Idle Hands fans at? Are you one of those freaks who thinks I should have included Kids? Send me your comments, questions, and concerns, and in the meantime, HAGS and I’ll see you all with more You Don’t Need Maps content soon.

-xoxo, Ellie

Thank you so much for reading. Please don’t forget to hit that subscribe button on my Patreon, or hit up my Venmo at xyoudontneedmapsx if you’d prefer to show your support with a one-time donation! If you’re interested in a band bio or some freelance writing, email me at xyoudontneedmapsx@gmail.com to hash out the details. If you’d just like to read dumb jokes, follow me on Twitter.