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The main reason I purchased this item was for the Dylan song "Most of the Time", but I have been happy with 3/4 of the other songs also. There is enough variety in the soundtrack that anyone should be able to find at least one song to enjoy.
This CD is not good.It's funny, if you are a Cusack fan (as I am) the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack is sooooooo much better than this one. Honestly, what can I say, this CD can hardly be called a sound track as most of the songs on this CD were barely, and I mean barely represented in the movie. I love the movie, but the CD does not have the feel of the movie and that is what I want from a soundtrack.The really interesting songs in the movie are not on this CD so you would be better off to look at the list of songs in the credits, find the ones you like, and buy those individually.too bad too because High Fidelity is about a record store owner who has excellent and broad interest in GOOD music. Buy that instead.Sorry, I don't know what the other reviewers see in this CD. I'm being quite honest here.
The first was "Singles," the grunge exposition that accompanied the Cameron Crowe film. However, I didn't stop there. The novel on which this film was based, by the way, had a huge impact on me as well (as did Nick Hornby's Songbook a few years later). The film was released right as the 1990s were closing, and I was quite frankly bored with new "pop" (probably meaning "rock" more than anything else) music by this time in my life. The thing that had turned me off to new pop music was the loud, tuneless blather on late-90s rock radio.
But this film introduced me to characters who cared so deeply about songs and the importance of pop music in daily life that I was inspired to dig back in and learn more about pop music again. When that one came out, it introduced me to then-new/new-to-me acts like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, the newly solo Paul Westerberg, Mudhoney, Alice In Chains, Smashing Pumpkins and The Screaming Trees, which paved the way for much of my listening during my teenage years. Sure I still enjoyed the stuff I had listened to over the years but the new songs I was hearing (a lot of post-grunge noise and hip-hop-metal was popular during that time) just grated on my nerves. Along the way my collection grew to include everything from Built To Spill and Yo La Tengo (two indie artists recommended by an employee at Amoeba and still two of my favorites to this day) as well as just about everything Elvis Costello released during the late 70s and 80s (the Rykodisc versions went out of print around this time but I was still able to find used copies of most of that stuff). Among the notable exceptions to this are two soundtracks that actually changed my approach towards music quite a lot.
I began to learn more about the music that was out there, looking for more classic stuff as well as new indie artists. However, the work of the Beta Band, Smog and Stereolab couldn't have been further away from that awful noise. However, probably the most exciting aspect of this soundtrack at the time was the then-new indie rock. I was mainly listening to jazz in fact.
It was the soundtrack to this film that opened me up to new music once again.I think my favorite thing about this soundtrack is the balance it strikes between then-new "underground" artists and historical artists, and how seamless the whole thing sounds. My point is, never before did one film and soundtrack have such an influence on my life. Film soundtracks are a tricky business typically, and usually don't do much for me. One of the first CDs I bought after hearing this soundtrack was The Three E.P.'s, which is to this day one of my all-time favorite discs and really takes me back to this great period of my life when I was rediscovering music all over again. I also bought CDs by Stereolab and Smog, both of which are in regular rotation as well. I lived in Berkeley at the time and became a regular at Amoeba and Rasputin records on Telegraph Ave, hanging with the employees trying to discover what I might have been missing. The inclusion of the older music on this soundtrack in a sense validates its significance to a younger generation of record collectors (Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, The Smiths and others are namechecked by Rob Gordon and his cohorts in the film), which is nice for me as a lot of the songs I liked at the time (and the songs which have stuck with me) come from "classic" artists such as these (I remember that I was discovering 70s-era Stevie Wonder right when this film came out - and of course I've always loved classic alternative artists like The Smiths). Several years later the soundtrack holds up just as nicely even if the "new" artists featured here aren't on the cutting edge anymore (or even together, as in the case of the Beta Band).
That soundtrack has actually held up remarkably well over the years and I still dig it out fairly regularly."High Fidelity" was the second. I'd recommend it in conjunction with the film and the Nick Hornby novel, along with Songbook. Tracks by the likes of The Velvet Underground, Love and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators sit nicely beside those of newer artists like The Beta Band, Stereolab and Smog. There were also some nice, lesser-known buried treasures here, like the later 80s work of Elvis Costello ("Shipbuilding") and Bob Dylan ("Most Of The Time"), both of which became two of my favorite songs. Eight years later my collection of CDs, vinyl and tapes has grown to over 1,000 and my apartment looks a lot like Rob Gordon's in High Fidelity. For me this is larger-than-life stuff, and if you are like me it just might draw you into the universe of thoughtful, quality pop music.
Phenomenal movie about good music could only generate a phenomenal soundtrack. My only dissappointment is that there aren't more tracks on this cd. However, as other reviewers have already kindly added the lengthy list of tunes heard and discussed in the film, you can look them up and explore the sounds. I have been turned onto at least 3 bands from this soundtrack i previously was unaware of, definitely a bonus to any soundtrack collection.
got a few of the songs on other albums before (think elvis costello etc) but there are a few gems that are harder to find.
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