Re-Acquiring Old CDs: "Music from the Motion Picture Titan A.E."

In my last blog, I had mentioned that the band Lit had followed up their album "A Place in the Sun" with their third album, which I admittedly don't know anything about, aside from the fact that one of the songs off that third album ended up on the soundtrack to the animated movie "Titan A.E." The "Titan A.E." soundtrack is yet another CD I once owned until losing it in my car accident, but I've recently gotten it back, and now I'm going to make it everybody else's problem.

    "Music from the Motion Picture Titan A.E."

    
    There may be some of you out there who remember when I used to more regularly produce video review content, now sitting archived on YouTube. Many years ago, I had done a collaboration video with fellow content creator That Sci-Fi Guy on a review of the year 2000 movie "Titan A.E." It was a fascinating film for me, notably being Don Bluth's last hurrah leading a large animated film under Fox, following his work on "Anastasia". The film had big name Hollywood actors voice acting in a position where people who specialize in voice acting would have probably been better. The story was about the destruction of Earth, humanity's place in the universe after the planet was destroyed, and a kid who would grow up into a young man seeking out the location of a project his dad was working on to make an entirely new planet to be inhabitable for humans. Although the film was only just kind of okay, I've always felt like it was something that had quite a lot of potential. The extra features on the DVD suggests that this could have been a much bigger universe. Maybe it would have been more suited to a TV series, to really give it a chance to breathe. It's a shame that it'll go down in history as being not particularly well-remembered. But I'm still kinda fond of it to this day.

    This particular soundtrack is full of licensed music that was featured throughout the movie, some of which was kind of surprising to slip into a cartoon film for slightly older kids. I do believe there is also a second soundtrack released that specifically features the original score composed specifically for the movie soundtrack, none of which is featured on this album.

    The very first song on the CD is Lit's "Over My Head" from their third studio album "Atomic". Though actually, the song was released on this soundtrack before migrating over to their own album. The song came paired with a music video inserting the band into scenes from the movie, which felt pretty innovative to me at the time. It's still a cool, fun music video to me even 24 years later.    It's the inclusion of Powerman 5000 that kind of surprised me about this album. Their song, "The End is Over", is the second song on the soundtrack, and is pretty much the sound you would expect from Powerman 5000. I really, really liked Powerman 5000's sound at that time, but I guess if I had to think of whether or not they were appropriate for a Don Bluth movie, I never would have guessed they would have made the cut. Ultimately, I do believe their sound works, but it does mean that somebody had to give them a chance.

    There's only so many of these songs that are particularly memorable straight from remembering it from the movie. "Cosmic Castaway" by Electrasy, "It's My Time to Fly" by The Urge, and "Not Quite Paradise" by Bliss stick out from memorable scenes. They're all fun, uplifting rock songs from particularly cool-looking scenes from the film, although I can't say that I'm savvy enough to know each of these bands for anything else. I guess I can kind of remember "Renegade Survivor" by Wailing Souls briefly from the film, but only barely. It sticks out on its own well enough for being a reggae-style track.

    The true hidden gem on the album is actually Jamiroquai's "Everybody's Going to the Moon". Jamiroquai already has such a unique sound, and up against an album of almost nothing but rock artists, his modern millennium disco and electronic stylings really make it jump out amongst all of the other collaborators.

    And with that, perhaps the songs by Lit, Powerman 5000, and Jamiroquai are the only tracks I would regularly return to off this compilation album. None of the other songs are particularly bad, and in fact many are plenty good enough. Maybe if you give some of them a shot you'll find something hidden away that will really gel with you. But for me, that only worked for three of the songs on the album that turned out to be real bangers that I would go back to over and over again.

    Please check out my other Re-Acquiring Old CDs entries, and if you feel so inclined, take a look at some of the other CDs remaining on my wish list that will get me closer to getting everything back. Take it easy, be seeing you again in the next entry.