Soundtrack Your Life: Celebrating Music From The Movies

 Movie soundtracks can amplify emotions, foreshadow events, and create a deeper connection between the audience and the film's world. Some soundtracks have been particularly successful in shaping the films and achieving commercial success. 

Let's be clear here. A soundtrack typically refers to a broader collection of songs, while "score" usually denotes original music composed specifically for the film. 

 In Ear Worthy's continuous search for the best indie podcasting, we've discovered a music podcast that hit all the right notes, is always in tune with its listeners, and understands the intersection of music and movies. 

The podcast is called Soundtrack Your Life. The show began in July 2020 and is in its sixth season. It's exactly the type of narrative, informational, artistic and season-formatted show that the large podcast networks are trying to put out of business with celebrity podcasts, cheaply made true-crime shows, and bro-culture comedy shows.

 Twice a month, co-hosts, Nicole Barlow and Ryan Pak, take a look at a soundtrack. Whether it be a song, a band, or a connection to a specific scene, They discuss personal connections to the soundtrack, with a guest. Episodes are released on the 2nd and 4th Mondays of each month. So far, the duo has released over 125 episodes. 

I am already bingeing their episodes.  

The first episode debuted in July 2020 with Kids (1995) w/ Damon Gross  Ryan and Damon Gross (Joy Luck Division, The Visitors Q) discuss the soundtrack to the 1995 Larry Clarke film, Kids. It produced the surprise Billboard Top 40 Single, "Natural One" by The Folk Implosion, Lou Barlow's 3rd most famous band. The co-hosts discussed the influence of the soundtrack's artists on their lives, as well as how Kids launched the career of soundtrack supervisor, Randall Poster.

One of my favorite episodes is a recent one where the co-hosts discuss the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack, which contained all previously released songs. The co-hosts welcome pop culture writer Russ Burlingame, who discusses how the movie is the first soundtrack to ever hit #1 on the Billboard Top 200 charts with all previously released songs. It's sold over 3 million copies and was the second best-selling soundtrack in 2014 behind only the Frozen soundtrack. Guest and co-hosts also note that, beyond sales, the soundtrack is also partly responsible for the resurrection of the cassette tape.

This episode is an example of how seamlessly the co-hosts blend together on the show to dissect these movie soundtracks, interview guests, and derive cultural insights from the soundtrack music. The show itself uses a conventional format, with an upbeat, syncopated intro and outro music, solid sound quality, and seamless co-host collaboration.

I admire the fact that the co-hosts don't just focus on the most visible and well-known movie soundtracks. They don't shy away from the obscure, the quirky, and the innovative. Their July 14, 2025, episode on the soundtrack to the 1980 space opera Flash Gordon from Queen is a prime example of music and film dissection. According to guest Christian Dryden of the band The Ritualists, Queen took the assignment so seriously that they spent a year dedicated to creating the soundtrack, and the iconic "Flash's Theme" and "The Hero" even made regular appearances in Queen's set lists.

 A film school graduate, Ryan Pak has been storytelling in many different forms. Whether it be his film school award-winning screenplay, The Silent Treatment, or his 2012 memoir, Stories in the Key of Read, or even in his songwriting, humor and tales of the human condition have been a constant in his stories. 

 Nicole Barlow is a writer and creative director working in advertising. You can find her at OhHeyNicole.com for project inquiries, passionate opinions on cacio e pepe (FYI -- it's kind of a mac and cheese) and advice on the best Walton Goggins (Justified, The Sons Of Anarchy and The White Lotus)  vocal tics to make your entire personality. 

On the November 13, 2023, show, the co-hosts welcomed one of our favorite indie podcasters, Dan Delgado, host of The Industry podcast, to talk about the Coen Brothers' 2013 film, Inside Llewyn Davis and its folk-heavy, T Bone Burnett-produced soundtrack. Dan is one of those people who can talk about a topic like plastic cutlery and make it interesting. 

One of their most interesting episodes took a different perspective, focusing on an actor's coda rather than one specific movie soundtrack. On the March 24, 2024, show, the co-hosts welcomed writer Stephen Lee Naish to talk about four soundtracks from films that Dennis Hopper directed: Easy Rider, The Last Movie, Out of the Blue, and Colors. Naish had just recently released a book on Dennis Hopper and these soundtracks, called Music and Sound in the films of Dennis Hopper.

In the show, Naish discussed how Hopper was one of the first directors to use songtracks -- AKA using previously released music -- to soundtrack a film. While best known for the iconic soundtrack to Easy Rider, Hopper continued to use music in interesting ways in all of his films. Stephen Naish created a Hopper soundtrack mixtape that you can access here.

If you are an amateur musicologist, a devout movie fan, a pop culture savant, or just a fan of great art, check out Soundtrack Your Life.