Maybe this is New Wave meets Classical. Danny Elfman was front man for the 1980s New Wave band Oingo Boingo. If anyone has ever wondered just what the heck happened to this "one hit wonder" there's a simple explanation: he's been composing award winning scores for more films than you can shake a stick at. Suffering hearing damage from touring with the band, he was hired by his fan Tim Burton to write the score for Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1985 (the same year as their one-hit wonder Dead Man's Party) Then the film score gigs came fast and furious: Back To School, Beetlejuice, Schrooged, Batman, and today's selection, Dick Tracy. And that was all by 1990. Oh, yeah - he also wrote the theme to The Simpsons.
The Queen Of The World and I really like the film Dick Tracy. It is highly stylized which is easy to mess up but succeeds brilliantly in the same way that 300 succeeds at it. And the music is great all the way through, including Oscar and Grammy nominations.
And he has real non-film compositional chops as well. Here's his Violin Concerto "Eleven Eleven":
Not bad for a one-hit wonder, amirite? All right, all right - here it is:
Madonna's performance of Sooner Or Later (I Always Get My Man) was awesome, even thought it was written by Steven Sondheim.
1 comment:
"One hit wonder"??
"New" career writing film scores?
Pish tosh.
Weird Science" from 1985 predates both. And unlike Dead Man's Party, Weird Science actually charted, at #45.
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