Before watching the film, my father had warned me about the music. (He thinks he is a music expert because he listens to "good music" instead of today's popular music.) I was expecting the worst. My father was only partially correct. Some of the songs worked, others did not.
The one song that I specifically remember my father warning me about is the Will.i.am song titled "Bang Bang." I'd heard the song before in the commercials for the movie when it first came out, and I was not impressed. The song is just such an ugly one, it did not go well with The Great Gatsby film. The beat is somewhat catchy, but the repetition of the word "bang" is mainly obnoxious and slightly gross to listen to. The song is ultimately quite cringe-inducing.
As for the rest of the music, I thought the movie a fairly good job with making it easier for today's audiences to realize how the parties were, whether I actually enjoyed the music or not. If the movie chose to use music that was popular then, today's audience would think that it was kind of lame. I imagine that the two kinds of music would display very different atmospheres for Gatsby's parties.
My favorite part involving music was the Lana Del Rey song "Young and Beautiful." At one point, there was a character at one of Gatsby's parties performing the song in a "old-timey" way, at least compared to the modern-sounding version. The lyrics were the same, but the instrumental part was different. I like the original version of the song, but the movie did a good job of transforming it into a song that sounded like it fit with the time period.
This doesn't have much to do about music, but it was really weird to see Tobey Maguire, AKA Spiderman, as Nick. He worked better as Peter Parker.
I have to agree that I thought a few of the songs were a bit out of place and didn't exactly seem Gatsby-ish. I must say thought that I also really liked the songs that were redone to be "old-timey." They gave the movie a better feel to it than the newer songs such as "Band Bang." They just seemed to fit the time period a lot better, though I understand that they were supposed to compliment the "old-timey" songs by being targeted towards a younger audience.
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