Album Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 & 2 by Various Artists

I can't tell you how many times I was riding in someone's car in 1987 and found myself listening to the Pretty in Pink soundtrack.  For a certain age group that album was huge and for good reason.  It introduced many of us to new artists and was a solid collection of music that fit that 16-19 year old angst perfectly.

That's the experience I was thinking of when I put on these two soundtracks.  The world is of course a much different place for music now that it was in 1986, but it's still nice to see artists like St. Vincent getting on these soundtracks right next to Bruno Mars.  Like Pretty in Pink these two soundtracks are full of angst ridden songs and contain a good mix of artists.

What's missing?  Well I can't really say because I'm not a 17 year old living in Paducah, Kentucky.  Will this album introduce those kids to music they wouldn't have heard otherwise, I don't know.  Radio is essentially dead for that generation and I'm not really sure what their outlets are for finding new music and discovering new artists.

My guess would be that these albums will be bought by fans of the movies and the books and will not have the type of cultural impact that the Pretty in Pink soundtrack had.  The world we live in has changed so much in those 26 years that it's hard to imagine a movie soundtrack ever again having that kind of impact. Still I was happy to see that the video I've embedded for this review was made by someone who said they had never heard of the band until they bought the soundtrack.

Following the Rhapsody rating method I give it 2 out of 5 stars for Not Bad.