SUSO

QUEEN OF THE SOUNDTRACK

Tarantino’s music advisor changed music and movies.

“Everybody be cool this is a robbery!”

“Any of you f***ing pricks move, and I’ll execute every mother f***ing last one of you!”

Pulp Fiction’s classic opening scene set a whole new tone, one that would alter the movie soundtrack landscape forever. In 1994, as popcorn toting, soon-to-be-Tarantino-worshipping young movie fans settled into their seats, Dick Dale and the Del-Tones’ pounding surf-stomp, ‘Misirlou’, kicked in, its stuttering guitars and unforgettable Mariachi trumpet pinning the audience down. The soundtrack was an absolute must-have. 

Karyn Rachtman, music supervisor for Tarantino on Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, transformed the way we listen to movies. She put the music out there, up front, on centre stage, competing with the characters for our attention. Dusty Springfield’s sultry ‘Son of a Preacherman’ accompanies Vincent Vega’s arrival at the Wallace household in Pulp Fiction, and it couldn’t possibly be any other way. ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ by Stealers Wheel establishes the rhythm for Mr Blonde’s psychotic earectomy attack on the captive cop in Reservoir Dogs. The cinematography and the music are completely interdependent.

Rachtman was one of those people who had the kind of revelation many dream of and only a few actually stumble upon. She realised that she could make a career out of her true passion, and with the requisite determination, she did just that.  

"I would always be the one that said to friends who were breaking up with somebody, 'Let me make you a tape of five songs that will make you feel better.’ I loved doing that. It never crossed my mind that somebody could do it for a living."

Her rise was meteoric. During the 90s she moved to Vice President of Capitol Records Soundtracks, then on to spearhead a new soundtrack division at Interscope Records. There she put together the soundtrack to Bulworth. Not a classic film, but in the words of Rolling Stone magazine, ‘one of the tightest hip-hop-influenced albums of the decade.’ It took hip-hop to another level; she boldly slapped it in the faces of mainstream America, and it spawned a number 1 smash in Pras Michel’s ‘Ghetto Supastar’.

Take this chance to relive her work:

Categories Music Film Tags Music Film Tarantino

By on 9/10/08