 Parodying everything from The Breakfast Club to American Pie, Not Another Teen Movie tries to do for the teen movie genre what the Scary Movie franchise did for horror. Still reading?
The accompanying soundtrack is nothing more than a bunch of pop cover versions by well known and not so well known modern rock acts. As a concept it's got legs; I mean Manson's version of Sweet Dreams and Limp Bizkit's Faith were pretty cool a few years back . . .
Talking of Marilyn Manson; this album opens with Tainted Love. If you haven't heard this version yet, then you've obviously been living under a stone. You're either going to love it or you're going to hate it; it's one of those.
The Smashing Pumpkins' brave interpretation of Depeche Mode's Never Let Me Down Again is next. Previously available on the Depeche Mode covers album For The Masses, it's a great version of a great song.
Orgy's excellent industrialisation of New Order's Blue Monday takes third spot, and by now you'll be starting to pick up on one of the problems with this album: A lot of these songs have already been released, and could already be in your record collection. Goldfinger's 99 Red Balloons, Muse's Please, Please Please, Let Me Get What I Want - both readily available.
A lot of the other tracks here a wilfully obscure. Phantom Planet doing Pat Benetar's Somebody's Baby? System Of A Down doing Berlin's The Metro? I thought not . . .
Apart from the songs already covered (ahem), there are a couple of other tracks worth mentioning: Saliva merge The Pretenders' Message Of Love with the riff from Manson's The Beautiful People to great effect, and Stabbing Westward put an uncharacteristically poppy spin on Joy Division's Bizarre Love Triangle. There's some strong material on Not Another Teen Movie, but as a whole this album's good and not great. For cool cover versions, Me First And The Gimme Gimmes are your best bet. If you've already exhausted the Gimmes' back catalogue, then the Not Another Teen Movie soundtrack may well be what you're looking for. :: Rowan Shaeffer |
