Great choice of music or poor advertisement for Gatsby???

Great choice of music or poor advertisement for Gatsby???

Great Gatsby Soundtrack

Lina Uzunhasan

17 February 2016

The Great Gatsby: Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film is the soundtrack to The Great Gatsby (film from 2013), an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. The album was produced by Baz Luhrmann and Anton Monsted, while Jay-Z served as the album’s executive producer.

The album was released two weeks before the release of the movie and netted an amazing 51.1 million dollars before the release of the movie (1 week after the release of the album!). The film was an incredible hit for the year since, alongside the dream actor Leonardo DiCaprio, the film also features Toby Maguire, Carey Mulligan and like its not enough, it was shot in 3D.

The Gatsby , in case you guys haven't studied it, is a story of a bootlegger millionaire Jay Gatsby and his neighbour Nick Carraway. It took place in 1920’s, a prohibition era when jazz music considered to be very valuable. Jazz music was considered to be a cultural movement that played a big role in the book itself as well. 

The record was reportedly worked on for two years. During those years the pair worked on translating the Jazz Age to the music of our times. The duo did this by mixing hip-hop, Jazz and other music types. The production would be more sensible if modern musicians that could be translated into ‘modern’  Jazz would make the match of the music and the movie more aesthetic than arbitrary. Instead, singers like Will.i.am and Fergie made the theme get ruined. The movie seems to be separate to the music. 

It is very important that the soundtrack is modern and known by the audience of the movie; however, in this case the theme to be ruined is more important of a problem than advertising the movie to the audience.

Think of it, you are watching Gatsby drink whiskey and suddenly you hear Jay-Z playing. I personally think that it would be a confusing scene after all, making it hard to understand the actual meaning of it. Gatsby wouldn't allow black people in the building anyways. 

It makes sense to add Kanye to the soundtrack because he also came from the bottom to the top of the line just like Gatsby himself. But his tracks not only don't fit the ‘jazz’ music but also it sounded like it was not even recorded properly. For example, the cover for Back to Back also sounded quite bad, (Beyonce and Andre 300 struggle through the entire song) why not use the original song from amy Winehouse?  

Of course the reason behind all this is money. They are trying to advertise the movie and the people homage the soundtracks and of course Luhrmann want to make money out of the situation. Considered that they worked on Jazz Age for 2 years might mean that they tried to make the situation less effective (less damage). This whole situation made the movie more popular and the soundtrack sold more than it would have. So we could say this was a decision of money eventually but not for art.