The Great Gatsby (soundtrack)

The Great Gatsby: Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film
General information
Released	May 6, 2013
Recorded	2012–13
Label	Interscope
Running time	56:32 (Standard) 1:12:34 (Deluxe)
Artist	Various artists

 The Great Gatsby: Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film (also known as Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film The Great Gatsby) is the soundtrack to the 2013 film The Great Gatsby, an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel of the same name, released through Interscope Records on May 6, 2013. The album was produced by Baz Luhrmann and Anton Monsted, while Jay-Z served as the album's executive producer. "Young and Beautiful" performed by Lana Del Rey served as the album's lead single and it was released on April 23, 2013.

Development

Jay-Z served as an executive producer for both the album and the film. He and film director Baz Luhrmann worked together for two years, "translating the Jazz Age sensibility of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel into the musical equivalents of our own times, through the blending of hip-hop, traditional jazz and other contemporary musical textures". On his approach to the project, Luhrmann said: "The question for me in approaching Gatsby was how to elicit from our audience the same level of excitement and pop cultural immediacy toward the world that Fitzgerald did for his audience? And in our age, the energy of jazz is caught in the energy of hip-hop." Luhrmann also revealed that Jeymes Samuel from The Bullitts was one of the people he worked with for the soundtrack. He further described his collaborations with the producers of the album during an interview saying, "[James is] a really great friend of [Jay's] and just a unique human being. He defines energy; he defines spirit and he's a pop cultural genius. And I worked with Anton Monsted ... a great little team." The duo also worked with composer Craig Armstrong, who scored Luhrmann's films Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge! (2001), and executive music supervisor Anton Monsted.

Promotion

On April 4, 2013, Interscope and Warner Bros. announced the track listing for the album. The same day, a new trailer for the film featured previews of three songs from the soundtrack ("Back to Black", "Over the Love", and "Young and Beautiful"). One MTV contributor wrote that the trailer spotlights the relationship between two of the film's characters, "but it's really only here to show off the movie's soundtrack". A six-minute sampler of the soundtrack which contained snippets of the songs was released on April 16, 2013 on YouTube excluding "Back to Black" and "100$ Bill". The whole album was made available for streaming through NPR on May 2, 2013.

Singles

"Young and Beautiful", co-written and performed by Lana Del Rey, served as the album's lead single. It was released as a digital download on April 23, 2013. The alternative rock ballad was co-written by Lana Del Rey and Rick Nowels, who also produced it. A music video for the song was going to be released on April 22, but it got pushed back and was finally released on May 10.

"A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)", performed by Fergie, Q-Tip and GoonRock premiered on Rolling Stone's official website on April 15, 2013, as the album's first official promotional single. The song was officialy released as a single on May 17, 2013. Its music video featuring Fergie was released on August 6, 2013.

"Bang Bang", performed by will.i.am, was premiered on American Idol on May 2, 2013. It was released as the soundtrack's third single on June 26, 2013, while its music video was released on May 20, 2013.

Promotional singles

"Over the Love" by Florence and the Machine was released as a promotional single on April 17, 2013 on GQ's official website. "Together" by The xx and "Into the Past" by Nero were released as promo singles on April 24, 2013.

Other songs

Several songs were released in full prior to the release of the album. Knowles' and André 3000's cover of "Back to Black" was premiered by Mark Ronson on his East Village Radio show on April 26, 2013. Sia's "Kill and Run" also appeared online a few days later. Emeli Sandé's cover of "Crazy in Love" was premiered online on April 30, 2013 through SoundCloud. On May 2, 2013, the American Idol's twelfth season final four contestants covered Sandé's version of "Crazy in Love".

Composition

The Daily Telegraph described the film's music as a "decidedly modern mix of 21st century rap, rock and pop". Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone commented that the songs in the album have "a consistent mood of noirish, doomed romance". Several songs on the album feature influences from electronic music which was also present in the soundtrack for Romeo + Juliet, also produced by Luhrmann. Other musical elements which are featured on the albums include electronica, hip-hop and rock music with jazz-age sounds. Kathy McCabe of The Daily Telegraph noted the inclusion of "orchestral flourishes" in most of the songs. Instrumentally, horn-driven sounds with loping bass beats and house music synths are used in the songs.

The themes in the songs include partying, murder and heartache as well as "the story's point home – illusionary love, the excess of the leisure classes, the curse of money" as stated by Cristina Jaleru of The Associated Press. Entertainment Weekly's Adam Carlson concluded that the soundtrack's songs reveal that it is set 100 years ago. He noted that it contains "all honking brass and a preference for tempos that slide up the scale like liquor, getting hot just as they hit the chorus." Logan Smithson of the webzine PopMatters commented that an important thing for a soundtrack was to maintain a cohesive sound: a general theme to piece the tracks together and make it sound like a single piece of work rather than a collection of songs. He further noted that the soundtrack accomplished this feat although the artists came from a variety of genres and backgrounds. He further noted, "The Great Gatsby Soundtrack does its job of capturing the sound of the Roaring '20s. A fusion of horns brings the era to life with a modern twist. Jazzy melodies are captured by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra. Some songs certainly have a neo-soul vibe going, reminiscent of the late Amy Winehouse."

Track listing

Standard

1. "100$ Bill" by Jay-Z (Carter, Mast)
2. "Back to Black" by Beyoncé x André 3000 (Winehouse, Ronson)
3. "Bang Bang" by will.i.am (Adams, Johnson, Mack, Bono)
4. "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)" by Fergie, Q-Tip and GoonRock (Listenbee, Orvash, McDonald, Richard, Smith, Ferguson, Scott, Martin, Fareed)
5. "Young and Beautiful" by Lana Del Rey (Grant, Nowels)
6. "Love Is the Drug" by Bryan Ferry with The Bryan Ferry Orchestra (Ferry, MacKay)
7. "Over the Love" by Florence and the Machine (Hammond, Harpoon, SBTRKT, Welch)
8. "Where the Wind Blows" by Coco O. of Quadron (Martin, Doughtery, Ponce)
9. "Crazy in Love" by Emeli Sandé and The Bryan Ferry Orchestra (Record, Knowles, Harrison, Carter)
10. "Together" by The xx (Smith, Sim, Madley Croft)
11. "Hearts a Mess" by Gotye (De Backer, Burgie, Attaway)
12. "Love Is Blindness" by Jack White (U2, Bono, The Edge)
13. "Into the Past" by Nero (Ray, Stephens, Watson, Armstrong)
14. "Kill and Run" by Sia (Furler, Braide)

Deluxe

1. "100$ Bill"
2. "Back to Black"
3. "Young and Beautiful"
4. "Love Is Blindness"
5. "Crazy in Love" (Kid Koala Version)
6. "Bang Bang"
7. "I Like Large Parties" (Dialogue) by Elizabeth Debicki
8. "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)"
9. "Love Is the Drug"
10. "Can't Repeat the Past?" (Dialogue) by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire
11. "Hearts a Mess"
12. "Where the Wind Blows"
13. "Green Light" (Dialogue)
14. "No Church in the Wild" by Jay-Z and Kanye West featuring Frank Ocean (West, Carter, Breaux, Njapa, Dean, Nash, Wright, Manzanera, Brown, Roach)
15. "Over the Love"
16. "Together"
17. "Into the Past"
18. "Kill and Run"
19. "Over the Love (Of You)" by Florence and the Machine and SBTRKT
20. "Young and Beautiful" (DH Orchestral Version)
21. "Gatsby Believed in the Green Light" (Dialogue) by Tobey Maguire and Craig Armstrong

Personnel

Credits for Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film The Great Gatsby adapted from Allmusic.

• André 3000 – primary artist
• Beyoncé – primary artist
• The Bryan Ferry Orchestra – primary artist
• Lana Del Rey – primary artist
• Fergie – primary artist
• Bryan Ferry – primary artist
• Florence and the Machine – primary artist
• GoonRock – primary artist
• Gotye – primary artist
• Jay-Z – primary artist
• Nero – primary artist
• Coco O. – primary artist
• Q-Tip – primary artist
• Emeli Sandé – primary artist
• Sia – primary artist
• Jack White – primary artist
• will.i.am – primary artist
• The xx – primary artist

Accolades

The Great Gatsby: Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film got nominated for an American Music Award on the category of Top Soundtrack, but lost to the soundtrack of Pitch Perfect. "100$ Bill", "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)", "Over the Love", "Together" and "Young and Beautiful" got prenominated for an Oscar.

Charts

Although it was predicted by Billboard that the album would debut at number two on the Billboard 200 chart with first week sales of over 100,000 copies, it sold 137,000 copies in its first week. 119,000 copies of the total copies sold in the first week were based on digital downloads which made the album debut at number one on the Digital Albums chart. With this the album gained the largest digital sales week for a soundtrack. As of July 3, 2013, the album has sold 387,000 copies in the United States.

Chart (2013)	Peak position
Australian Albums Chart	2
Austrian Albums Chart	10
Belgian Albums Chart (Flanders)	8
Belgian Albums Chart (Wallonia)	20
Canadian Albums Chart	3
China Sino Chart	3
Croatian Albums Chart	16
Czech Albums Chart	23
Danish Albums Chart	11
Dutch Albums Chart	61
Finnish Albums Chart	48
French Albums Chart	14
German Albums Chart	13
Greek Albums Chart	5
Hungarian Albums Chart	28
Irish Compilation Albums Chart	2
Italian Compilation Albums Chart	3
New Zealand Albums Chart	3
Norwegian Albums Chart	21
Polish Albums Chart	10
Russian Albums Chart	1
South Korean Albums Chart	30
Spanish Albums Chart	22
Swiss Albums Chart	8
UK Compilation Albums Chart	3
US Billboard 200	2
US Alternative Albums	1
US Rock Albums	1
US Soundtrack Albums	1

Singles chart positions

List of singles, with selected chart positions and certifications

Title	Year	Peak chart positions										Certifications
		US	AUS	AUT	CAN	FRA	GER	IRE	NLD	SWI	UK
"Young and Beautiful"	2013	22	9	57	45	31	50	16	79	31	23	RIAA: Gold ARIA: Platinum MC: Gold
"A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)"		77	43	17	72	30	10	—	—	59	—	ARIA: Gold RIANZ: Platinum
"Bang Bang"		—	84	—	—	188	—	14	—	—	3	BPI: Silver
"—" denotes a recording that did not chart or was not released in that territory.

References

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia page The Great Gatsby: Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film. The revision history lists the authors. The text on Warner Bros. Entertainment Wiki and Wikipedia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA).

v - e - d

Media The Great Gatsby (Soundtrack/Video/Novelization) Characters Jay Gatsby • Nick Carraway • Daisy Buchanan • Tom Buchanan • Jordan Baker • Myrtle Wilson • George Wilson • Owl Eyes • Catherine • Pammy Buchanan • Meyer Wolfsheim • Ewing Klipspringer • Walter Perkins Locations Midwest • North Shore • Flushing Meadows–Corona Park • St. Olaf College Songs "Young and Beautiful" • "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)" • "Bang Bang"