97. Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Punch-Drunk Love (Nonesuch, 2002)
“You’ve got to hope that there’s someone for you / as strange as you are,” sums up P.T. Anderson’s weird, brilliant Adam Sandler movie. This soundtrack, mostly written and shaped by Aimee Mann producer Jon Brion functions more like a score, especially in its recurring motifs (the “Punch Drunk Melody” reappears in variations both subtle and oddball). They’re coupled with downright bizarre intrusions—who else would’ve thought of remixing Shelly Duvall’s disarmingly sweet, childlike “He Needs Me” (originally from Robert Altman’s Popeye)? It’s jarring, but it fits in with the film’s gauzy, hypnotic delirium of being pulled under by escalating, uncontrollable forces. And the Brion-sung, harmonium-accented “Here We Go” is his most wistfully perfect pop lament to date (eat your heart out, Todd Rundgren).
“You’ve got to hope that there’s someone for you / as strange as you are,” sums up P.T. Anderson’s weird, brilliant Adam Sandler movie. This soundtrack, mostly written and shaped by Aimee Mann producer Jon Brion functions more like a score, especially in its recurring motifs (the “Punch Drunk Melody” reappears in variations both subtle and oddball). They’re coupled with downright bizarre intrusions—who else would’ve thought of remixing Shelly Duvall’s disarmingly sweet, childlike “He Needs Me” (originally from Robert Altman’s Popeye)? It’s jarring, but it fits in with the film’s gauzy, hypnotic delirium of being pulled under by escalating, uncontrollable forces. And the Brion-sung, harmonium-accented “Here We Go” is his most wistfully perfect pop lament to date (eat your heart out, Todd Rundgren).
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