Titanic (soundtrack)

Titanic
Soundtrack by James Horner
Released	November 18, 1997
Recorded	?
Genre	Soundtrack
Length	72:29
Label	Sony Classical
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link

Titanic is the soundtrack to the film of the same name composed by James Horner. Cameron originally intended Enya to compose the music, and in fact put together a rough edit of the film using her music as a temporary soundtrack. After she declined, he approached James Horner. Their relations were cold after their first cooperation in Aliens, but the soundtrack of Braveheart made Cameron overlook it. Horner composed the soundtrack having in mind Enya's style; Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø performed the wordless vocals on the soundtrack. Many have noted the similarities between certain cues from "Titanic" and the Enya tracks "Smaointe" and "Book Of Days" from her 1991 album Shepherd Moons. The latter track was also featured in the 1992 film Far and Away. Céline Dion, who was no stranger to movie songs in the 1990s, sang "My Heart Will Go On", the film's signature song written by James Horner and Will Jennings. At first, Cameron did not want a song sung over the film's credits, but Horner disagreed, and without telling Cameron, went ahead and wrote one anyway, and recorded Dion singing it. Cameron changed his mind when Horner presented what he proposed, and the song ended up winning a Best Original Song Oscar. The song was also a hit, worldwide, going to the top of the pop charts around the world. Other artists were invited to submit songs for the movie including contemporary Christian artist, Michael W. Smith. He mentions in the liner notes to the song In My Arms Again from his 1998 CD, Live the Life, "Inspired and written for the movie Titanic, grateful for the opportunity to send them a song; grateful it landed on this record." The soundtrack CD for Titanic was the biggest-selling primarily orchestral film score in history, and led to the release of a second volume (Back to Titanic) that contained a mixture of previously unreleased soundtrack recordings with newly-recorded performances of some of the songs in the film, including one track recorded by Clannad singer, Máire Brennan. For the choral background of certain tracks, Horner made use of a digital choir instead of a real one: After the orchestral music was recorded, Horner personally performed the synthesized choir over a playback of the recording. [1] [2] The DTS[3] and SACD multichannel [4] editions of this soundtrack enable the listener to actually hear the orchestral recording without the electronic choir, if attention is paid to the center channel of the 5.1 surround mix. The idea behind using electronics rather than a real choir stemmed from Horner wanting to avoid a 'church'-like sound.[5]

Track listing

1. "Never an Absolution" – 3:03
2. "Distant Memories" – 2:23
3. "Southampton" – 4:01 clip
4. "Rose" – 2:52 clip
5. "Leaving Port" – 3:26
6. "Take Her to Sea, Mr. Murdoch" – 4:31
7. "Hard to Starboard" – 6:52
8. "Unable to Stay, Unwilling to Leave" – 3:56
9. "The Sinking" – 5:05
10. "Death of Titanic" – 8:26
11. "A Promise Kept" – 6:02
12. "A Life So Changed" – 2:13
13. "An Ocean of Memories" – 7:57
14. "My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme from 'Titanic')" – 5:10
15. "Hymn to the Sea" – 6:25[6]

Charts

The soundtrack raced up the Billboard 200 chart, storming from Number 11 to Number One in January 1998. It would remain at the top for sixteen straight weeks; no album since then has spent at least ten consecutive weeks at Number One. The album has sold approximately 30 million copies worldwide and is the biggest selling instrumental soundtrack album of all time. It also hit number one on the UK album chart and on Polish album chart (7x Platinum), as well. The soundtrack was certified Diamond in Canada (1,000,000 units) by the CRIA on March 31, 1998. [7] The soundtrack was also extremely successful in Australia, where it reached number one and was certified 5x platinum by ARIA in 1998 for sales of 350,000 copies. ^[1]

External links

• Official site (via Sony BMG Masterworks)