Skip to content
News

‘Singles’ Turns 20: Who’d Be on Film’s Soundtrack in 2012?

Photo courtesy Warner Bros.

Today is the 20th anniversary of Cameron Crowe’s grunge rom-com Singles. The movie’s soundtrack, almost as much as any other, helped cement the idea of a “Seattle scene” in the pop culture hive mind when it arrived in 1992. But scenes come and go and were in all likelihood never really as much of a scene as people made them at to be. So we undertook our own little thought experiment. Keeping in mind the current lack of a geographically specific hard-rock scene, we wondered: if someone were to make Singles today, what artists would be on the soundtrack? As best as we could, we tried to match the mood of the tracks on the original album to the ones on our, ahem, alternative version. And Mark Lanegan, who showed up on the Singles soundtrack with Screaming Trees, is back, playing the elder statesman role that Paul Westerberg handled in 1992. Jimi Hendrix is still around, too. Because you don’t mess with Jimi.

Here’s the original Singlestrack list:

1. “Would?,” Alice in Chains
2. “Breath,” Pearl Jam
3. “Seasons,” Chris Cornell
4. “Dyslexic Heart,” Paul Westerberg
5. “The Battle of Evermore,” The Lovemongers
6. “Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns,” Mother Love Bone
7. “Birth Ritual,” Soundgarden
8. “State of Love and Trust,” Pearl Jam
9. “Overblown,” Mudhoney
10. “Waiting for Somebody,” Paul Westerberg
11. “May This Be Love,” Jimi Hendrix
12. “Nearly Lost You,” Screaming Trees
13. “Drown,” The Smashing Pumpkins

Where are more anthems of our youth? On to the Spotify playlist below!