How The ‘Romeo + Juliet’ Soundtrack Defined A Generation Of Angsty, Teenage Lovers

At the end of 1997, the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack went five times platinum to become the second highest-selling album of the year.

The soundtrack leap-frogged Hanson, The Spice Girls, Celine Dion and No Doubt for the accolade; only Savage Garden had the guts to go 10-times platinum and claim the number-one spot. In America, it hit number 12 — the juggernaut soundtrack there was Space Jam.

The early ’90s was still a golden age for physical album sales — a prosperous pre-internet period that would soon be obliterated by the file sharing site Napster. Film soundtracks in the charts was common, especially if a cross-promotional single was tied to a release like Will Smith’s Men in Black. Scrolling through the end of year chats for 1997 you’ll see soundtracks for The Fully Monty, Men in Black, Evita, Forrest Gump and Spawn. Even The Simpsons album, Songs in in the Key of Springfield, outsold The Foo Fighters, Blur and Barbra Streisand.

The success of the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack is an astonishing achievement — keep in mind this is a soundtrack from a Shakespeare adaptation from an emerging Australian filmmaker, Baz Luhrmann, and led by two young actors, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, who were making the tricky transition from TV kid actors to film stars. The project was a risk on a number of levels — and its soundtrack helped propel the film beyond just being a modern update of a classic.

Shakespeare Is Cool Now Guys

Romeo + Juliet was released on Boxing Day 1996 in Australia – one of the biggest cinema-going days of the year. But the idea of spending school holidays going to see a film based on a play you probably had to study at school seemed kind of…uncool. The major sell was a modern update where swords had been replaced with guns, but even that summary had all the energy of a youth pastor leaning on a desk.

Publicity for Romeo + Juliet focused on the action elements to get past any Shakespeare hang-ups. The trailer focusses on gun battles and cars flipping over. Why? Because action films ruled in 1996. The top three films were Independence Day, Twister and Mission: Impossible. Another modern adaption of a classic, Clueless (based on Jane Austen’s Emma) had a similar impact in ’95, but both films pre-date the teen film revival that would kick in proper a few years later with 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s All That and American Pie.

Ultimately, Romeo + Juliet was an outlier that became influential. It’s a rush of blood to the head from start to finish; an adaptation for the post-MTV generation stuck between the last rattle of grunge and the emergence of boybands, girl power and pop stars that were brighter than ever. Luhrmann’s melodramatic style pushes the film into overdrive and it’s a dizzying experience; like rapidly falling in love or being driven to a murderous rage.

A fiery passion lies at the heart of Romeo + Juliet that sets it apart from most Shakespeare adaptations. But style can only get you so far — the real mood of Romeo + Juliet lies in its soundtrack.

Young Hearts Run Free

We first meet an angsty Romeo (DiCaprio) on Verona Beach accompanied by a Radiohead B-side. It’s the perfect introduction — Radiohead had cemented themselves as angry boy thinking music years before, as grunge gave way to brash pop-punk in the mid-90s.

Luhrmann wanted Radiohead to be on the soundtrack and sent them a copy of the last 30 minutes of the film, hoping to tempt them. Radiohead were in-between albums at the time; The Bends was a hit and O.K. Computer was beginning to gestate. Luhrmann’s tactic worked: the band was inspired to write ‘Exit Music (For a Film)’ for Romeo + Juliet, which plays over the end credits but doesn’t feature on the soundtrack.

Now that the door was open to Radiohead, Luhrmann could ask for permission to use one of their other songs: ‘Talk Show Host’. The song, remixed by Nellee Hooper, is a whole mood. Josh Model from The A.V. Club noted: “[Talk Show Host] has a trip-hop feel already; it’s a slow-burner that Hooper made even scarier by pulling out some of the instrumentation and adding some dub-inspired echo to the background.”

‘Talk Show Host’ is the first song from the soundtrack that drops in the film (there 16 tracks in total) and it sets the entire lovesick tone. The soundtrack floats with Gavin Friday’s psychedelic ‘Angel’ before exploding with Kym Mayzelle’s ‘Young Hearts Run Free’; a cover of Candi Staton’s disco hit. That’s when the soundtrack really takes flight.

Then the fish tank happens.

In the film’s most iconic scene, DiCaprio and Danes eye each other on either side of a fish tank while Des-ree’s ‘Kissing You’ drifts in the background. The song ultimately becomes the film’s official lover’s theme, lending itself beautifully to an orchestral arrangement.

The soundtrack rolls through bands that rode the post grunge, pop-punk wave like Garbage, Everclear and the Butthole Surfers — you can practically hear the eyeliner. The Cardigan’s ‘Lovefool’ provides the soundtrack’s biggest earworm, burrowed inside us for 25 years and counting, perfectly suiting the wacky scenes between Juliet and the Nurse (Miriam Margolyes).

So far, the soundtrack was a who’s who of bands that helped ’90s teens navigate their awkward phase — but then, suddenly, Prince enters.

Unless you had the coolest parents of all time it was tricky to get a hold of Prince in the ’90s. In the first half of the decade, Prince turned his name into a symbol in one of the most dramatic re-brands of all time after a dispute with his record label. You were more likely to hear jokes about Prince than his new music.

The soundtrack rolls through bands that rode the post grunge, pop-punk wave like Garbage, Everclear and the Butthole Surfers — you can practically hear the eyeliner.

But Prince got a new batch of fans thanks to the choir arrangement of ‘When Doves Cry’ sung by Quindon Tarver. It was an appropriate song choice, with a narrative echoing that of the tragic lovers. The choir approach would continue with Rozalla’s ‘Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)’, a song most know at the time for being featured in a Coca-Cola commercial with dancers on rollerblades.

The use of choirs is consistent with, and complements, Luhrmann’s use of religious imagery throughout the film. Religious symbols adorn everything — even guns — to overcompensate for a city going to hell and the lovers caught in the flames; violence occurs at the very feet of a Jesus Christ statue.

But Wait, There’s So Much More

The Romeo + Juliet soundtrack was so popular that a second volume was released in mid-1997, featuring the film’s score, excerpts of dialogue, and songs that didn’t make the cut for volume one. Romeo + Juliet Volume 2 peaked at #2 on the ARIA charts and made the top 50 for the highest-selling albums of the year.

For the film’s tenth anniversary, Volume 1 was re-released with bonus tracks including the spoken word song ‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)’, featuring Tarver’s Rozella cover as a sample. What became known as ‘The Sunscreen Song’ took on a life of its own when it got radio play and bagged number 16 in triple j’s Hottest 100 for 1997. People wanted more, and so ‘The Sunscreen Song’ was included in an album Luhrmann released in ’98 called Something for Everybody, which featured music inspired by his films.

For those playing at home, that’s now three albums we’ve received off the back of one film.

Romeo + Juliet became the soundtrack to teenage love lives, the music that accompanied feelings of a first crush or a freshly broken heart. Suddenly, nearly every teenager became a hopeless romantic armed with a compact disco; hearts would flutter for posters of DiCaprio and Danes stuck up on bedroom walls.

The full spectrum of young love is contained within Romeo + Juliet and its soundtrack — one of the reasons why, 25 years later, it still hits home.

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Cameron Williams is a writer and film critic based in Melbourne who occasionally blabs about movies on ABC radio. He has a slight Twitter addiction: @MrCamW.

Romeo + Juliet will be screening in selected Australian cinemas from this Thursday to celebrate its 25th anniversary.