Editor’s Note: The Albumism staff has selected what we believe to be the 100 Greatest Soundtracks of All Time, representing a varied cross-section of films and musical genres. Click “Next Soundtrack” below to explore each soundtrack in the list or for easier navigation, view the full introduction & soundtrack index here.
Dazed and Confused
The Medicine Label (1993)
Selected by Justin Chadwick
“I knew before I was writing [the film], music was going to be the number one character,” Dazed and Confused director Richard Linklater confided during a SXSW Film Festival panel in 2012. “It was going to be the lead character—the music going on. I feel like as a teenager, that’s the most expressive element of your life.” Indeed, music is central to how the day in the life of a group of Texas high schoolers unfolds in Linklater’s semi-autobiographical film, which captures the innocence, naivete and hedonism of the mid 1970s era American high school experience like few other films ever have.
Linklater originally asked Led Zeppelin for the rights to use their 1972 single “Rock and Roll” in the film (and surprisingly enough, never requested the band’s 1969 version of Jake Holmes’ “Dazed and Confused”), but Robert Plant declined the request. No matter though. With classic songs by ‘70s rock luminaries Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, KISS, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and The Runaways, among others, this collection perfectly encapsulates the coming-of-age music of the decade. In the immortal words of Matthew McConaughey’s Wooderson, this soundtrack is most definitely “alright, alright, alright.”
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