Emily's Albums A to Z

Listened: Monday July 18

Trainspotting was one of the important movies of my high school life. It was the first R-rated movie I went to that I didn’t have to be accompanied to or lie about my age to enter (though I didn’t do that very often anyway).

At the time, our “sit around and do nothing” movie was A Clockwork Orange (we were a strange bunch of teenage girls), and Trainspotting owes a debt to it, so its influence on our lives kind of makes sense. It was one of the first movies I remember seeing with a very “short attention span” style – cuts to a new scene were quick and abrupt, but it worked very well. The worst toilet in Scotland, the dead baby, the drug-withdrawal hallucinations of the dead baby, the clean friend Tommy going to pieces and dying of AIDS, I remember it all very clearly, even though I haven’t seen it in many years.

The soundtrack brings many scenes right back – Brian Eno‘s Deep Blue Day immediately takes me into that toilet with Renton. I’m so glad I associate Lust For Life with a Hard Day’s Night-esque opening sequence rather than with cruise ships. When I hear Perfect Day, I have visions of beautiful overdoses running through my head. As a recent convert to the cult of New Order, listening to this album again, I remembered how much I enjoyed Temptation and how much more it means to me now that I have more context. I also love owning a non-album Pulp track, as anything Pulp does anywhere is worth the effort to acquire. And Underworld! This soundtrack was probably my first introduction to the joys of Underworld; that alone is so important.

It’s not overstating things to say both the movie and the soundtrack changed my life.