A Love Letter To The Terrifying And Inspired ‘Shrek’ Soundtrack

Today, May 18, marks the 20th anniversary of Shrek. But in this, our deeply memeified era, the celebration seems somewhat pointless — one way or the other, we have been mythologising the film since it was first released.

The cycles of acclaim, notoriety and finally ironic acceptance that the film has journeyed through are singular. When Shrek was first released, it was a runaway success, earning millions at the international box office and picking up a range of awards, including the very first Best Animated Feature Film award at the Oscars. Shortly thereafter, the bloom came somewhat off the rose; Shrek‘s aesthetic ugliness and nose-thumbing humor dated fast.

But even when Shrek became a laughing stock, it became a very specific kind of laughing stock, and the jokes were always undercut with a certain amount of love. It was a notorious film, sure, but it had become notorious in a way that belied something like genuine affection. Little surprise then that, over the last 13 years, those memes have transformed from specific ribbings to a genuine endorsement of the product. Our culture has learned to stop worrying and love the green ogre.

Hey Now…

And yet this process of memeification and adoration has obscured as much as it is revealed. It is hard to talk about Shrek without talking about the Shrek phenomenon — difficult, in so many words, to see the onion for its skin. And nowhere is that truer than in the case of Shrek‘s soundtrack, which, all jokes aside, is a genuinely ground-breaking work of tonal left-turns — ‘All Star’ included.

By now, the hits from the film’s soundtrack will be etched into your memory: the aforementioned ‘All Star’ by Smash Mouth, not to mention the band’s chaotic cover of ‘I’m A Believer’ by Neil Diamond, and a mournful version of ‘Hallelujah’ performed by Rufus Wainwright.

But the collection of songs is even stranger and tonally incoherent than its surface-level hits imply. There’s also a tune by Eels, a band most famous for an album about electroconvulsive shock therapy; a seductive Joan Jett-sung ball of leather; and a ballad by Baha Men, best known for their song ‘Who Let The Dogs Out?’ There are old-school romantic interludes; deeply dated hits from the two thousands; covers of covers; and the only song ever commercially released by Leslie Carter, sister to the Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter.

There’s no internal logic to the selection of these tunes — they brush up against each other messily, each pulling away from the tone created by the song that preceded them. By the time a version of ‘I’m A Believer’ sung by a donkey follows a ballad by the Pretenders, resistance has become futile. There’s no point fighting off the demented pull of these tracks anymore. The best thing to do when confronted by the Shrek soundtrack is to sit back and let it happen to you.

You’re A Rockstar

Susan Sontag once famously wrote that camp is alive to the “multitude of ways in which things can be taken.” So it goes with the roccoco energy of both Shrek and the soundtrack that it spawned. That, after all, is why the film and its songs have endured through multiple layers of revision; why they work when taken sincerely and when taken with one’s tongue planted firmly in one’s cheek.

The success of Shrek is that it somehow seems in on the very cruelest jokes made about it. It’s knowing, and it’s ugly, and it’s smart, and it’s dumb. And more than that, it’s all these things simultaneously. There is nothing that you can say about a song like ‘All Star’ that the song isn’t already saying itself.

As a result, it’s a somewhat doomed exercise to decide whether the Shrek soundtrack is “good” or “bad.” In truth, the work exists beyond these binaries. It is somehow both godawful — listen to Leslie Carter’s ‘Hey Now!’ more than once in a row, I dare you — and genuinely inspired; a work of hideous genius, like a perfectly realised statue carved out of shit.

And because the soundtrack exists beyond the boundaries of normal good taste, it does not appear tied to anyone time. It’s profoundly dated, but also without an era — play it to a Victorian child and a Mars resident from the distant future, and prepare for the exact same response; horror, confusion, gradual acceptance. We will all be dead and buried, and the Shrek soundtrack will still be running its demented loops, ‘I Would Walk (500 Miles)’ fading into a few screamed bars of Eddie Murphy, forever.

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Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Music Junkee. He tweets @JosephOEarp.