Music From The Film 'Moulin Rouge'

Baz Luhrmann’s forthcoming musical is set in the 19th century, features classic songs from the 20th and was made in the 21st. A lot of big names – Bowie, Beck, Bono – have been co-opted to make this soundtrack more interesting than your average movie tie-in.

Bookending proceedings is David Bowie’s version of the ‘40s standard, ‘Nature Boy’. His first version harks back to his early days when he was in thrall to Scott Walker’s mile-high melodrama, as we heard on the recent re-release of his late-‘60s BBC sessions. The second end is a collaboration with Massive Attack, and is by some distance the best thing on the album. Bowie sounds as strung out as the bonged-up Bristolians, adding an almost Chet Baker-style lament to their tetchy, tech-angst soundtrack. It’s weird, wired and quite wonderful.

On the down side, we also have to endure the main cast, Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, ahem, ‘interpreting’ pop standards (the former makes a passable if pointless stab at Gladys Knight’s ‘One Night I’ll Fly Away’; the latter offers up a schmaltzy version of Elton John’s ‘Your Song’) as well as some awful muck from the likes of Dianne Warren (writer for Celine fucking D**n).

It’s hard to know what to make of Bono and Gavin Friday’s duet of the T-Rex classic, ‘Children Of The Revolution’. Musically, it sounds very similar to ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me’ – interestingly, another of U2’s high-profile Hollywood soundtracks – with menacing, thrusting strings putting it about as Bono does Bolan. It’s all fine and dandy until the man Friday butts in with a ridiculous rap. In trying not to sound like Bono, he’s gone for a faux-hip-hop patois that sounds hopelessly lost between the Caribbean and Harlem. Per-leeese!

Beck, meanwhile, has made a whole career out of cannibalising other people’s music but there’s not much meat left on his version of Bowie’s ‘Diamond Dogs’. It could just as easily be any track from his last album. All style and no substance makes Beck a dull boy.

It might all makes sense when you see the movie!