Alfie (2004) Soundtrack by Jagger & Stewart
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Imagine stumbling across a 19 year old album that you hadn’t heard of, and that was written and performed by a favourite musician. Well, I did just that when I recently found the soundtrack to the 2004 remake of Alfie starring Jude Law.
As a longstanding Stones fan and impressed by Dave Stewart, the consumate musician and one half of the fabulous Eurythmics, I couldn’t believe that I had found an album containing 13 songs co-written and performed by Mick Jagger and Dave Stewart.
Nevertheless, my expectations were still not particularly high, as soundtracks are often little more than ambient music and musical-like tunes. Thankfully, this is not the case with the Alfie (2004) soundtrack.
The album opens with the first of three versions of ‘Old Habits Die Hard’, and one of the bookends of this albums. This is perhaps not surprising as the song won a number of major awards including the Golden Globe and World Soundtrack awards. The first version is Mick Jagger at his solo era best. The song is melody driven. It is memorable but will never be mistaken for a Stones’ track. The second versiom is the reprise, in part instrumental and in my opinion a version that highlights it’s outstanding melody. The final version and last song on the album has a fuller sound and features Sheryl Crow helping Mick out with the vocals.
The second track ‘Blind Leading the Blind’ also appears in two versions, the first is live and accoustic. It’s a nice enough melody, sung well by Jagger and remeniscent of early Stones love songs. When the song resurfaces towards the end of the album, it is in full electric splendor.
The album becomes more interesting with ‘New York Hustle’, a largely instrumental, funky driven song, featuring what I presume is Mick’s harmonica. The rhytm reminds me of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’.
‘Let’s Make it Up’ is a beautiful slow, soft bald. It builds up as Stones’ love songs tend to. Once again, it features harmonica and closes with great guitar courtesy of Dave Stewart, I would guess.
If the Stones were to release a Christmas single, it would probably sound like ‘Lonely Without You (This Christmas).’ The retro guitar sound (much like Mick Taylor in the early 1970s) is the highlight for me. Joss Stone’s appearance also compliments the song.
‘Jack the Lad’ provides a refreshing change of style. It’s an instrumental with George Benson like Vocoder Singing and prominent guitar. A winner.
Another instrumental track, ‘Standing in the Rain’ is probably the pick of the instrumental tracks. It is quite haunting and has a Louisiana swamp feel to it. It reminds me of Daniel Lanois on the ‘Sling Blade’ soundtrack. The soarding voice of Nadira ‘Nadz’ Seid is the cream on the cake.
So, all in all a quality package – written and performed by Jagger and Stewart, features quality studio musicians, and of course some great tunes. And I barely mentioned Joss Stone’s performance.
It deserves a greater audience.
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