"It will change your life; I swear"

In 1967, a mostly unknown folk duo from New York City performing under their last names provided a soundtrack to a daring screen adaptation by director Mike Nichols based on a 1963 novel by Charles Webb titled The Graduate. In the words of the pop culture blog Sarcasm Alley, the music and lyrics they produced "not only complimented the film, but enhanced it." For the young sixties generation that was on the dawn of a massive breakthrough in the sexual revolution, these traditional, peaceful folk-ballads dubbed over coming-of-age themes of adultery, temptation, and desire were an odd but hauntingly beautiful selection for the film. This is all without mention for what it did to the careers of the now- legendary duo, Simon & Garfunkel, as musicians and newly christened pop stars.

In 1967, the term "indie" as a music genre was far from even being imagined. The Graduate, however, sparked a fairly new concept in music promotion and that was the idea that a film studio and a record label could collaborate to push up and coming musicians by playing multiple tracks of a single artist in newly released films targeted to a youthful demographic. This subliminal marketing practice held court, really, until the 1990s when moviegoers and music-lovers alike began to notice the obvious relationship between film style and soundtrack. This is not to say that film genre and music genre did not pair well until the 1990s--anything from Jailhouse Rock to The Man With the Golden Arm would prove otherwise. It is just to push through the point that film and music may have never worked so well together to sell a subcultural zeitgeist of the "indie" category as it has in the last twenty years. Arguably, two films kick it all off: Reality Bites and Singles.

I apologize to my reader for quoting at length here, but one of the reviews I stumbled upon says everything there is to say about the new-wave nineties soundtrack as succinctly as I could ever put it. Here is what reviewer 'Lambchop' from epinions.com has to say about Singles: "The years 1990 through 1992 were banner years in the world of rock n' roll. Now considered the peak of the 'grunge' era, it yielded albums from massively popular acts Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden in addition to somewhat less known but equally noteworthy bands including Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, and Mother Love Bone. After 1992, the 'Seattle Sound' (as it was also known) became the MTV version of rock n' roll but before then it was raw, real, and angry. It was everything that rock music should be. There are few compilations that truly capture the spirit of the era. One collection that managed that feat is the soundtrack to Singles. The film also did a fair job at capturing the scene and the generational angst." Singles was to the grunge generation who grew up in the 1990s what Garden State would be to the indie generation growing up in the 2000s.

"What are you listening to?" asks a coy and self-doubtful Zach Braff.

"The Shins. Ya know 'em?" answers the adorably wired and dorky Natalie Portman.

"No."

"You gotta hear this one song, it will change your life; I swear.

When actor Zach Braff places the oversized headphones upon his 'tête,' some clever film and sound editing follows that "changes the lives" of many young kids hearing The Shins for the first time. Garden State quickly became an underground cult classic after its release in August 2004. The soundtrack was equally successful, winning a Grammy for "Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media" in 2005 and launching the mainstream acceptance of such indie standards as The Postal Service, Nick Drake, and Iron & Wine. It even had shed some indie cred on the Brit-Pop sensation of the day, Coldplay. (Ironically enough, for this article anyhow, the soundtrack also featured a Simon and Garfunkel tune--"The Only Living Boy in New York").

I could go on to list so many other indie films that have helped push new bands, like what Juno did for Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches, or what 500 Days of Summer did for She & Him, but as always is the case with these articles, brevity is golden. Of course, there is another film-soundtrack genre all on its own that hasn't been discussed whatsoever here. That is the trend for one single band to provide the entire soundtrack to a movie, especially for those movies whose narratives (fictional or otherwise) feature those musicians. An example of this would be the Irish-made Once or the Canadian-made This Movie is Broken which features music by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglova, and Broken Social Scene, respectively. But that is a whole other article unto itself.