''The Virgin Suicides'' is a score composed by French

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...

duo

Air The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for ...

for the 1999 film of the same name by

Sofia Coppola Sofia Carmina Coppola (; born May 14, 1971) is an American filmmaker and actress. The youngest child and only daughter of filmmakers Eleanor Coppola, Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola, she made her film debut as an infant in her father's acclaimed ...

. It was released on 23 February 2000 by

Virgin Records Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman. It grew to be a worldwid ...

. The album was nominated for Best Soundtrack at the

2001 Brit Awards Brit Awards 2001 was the 21st edition of the annual pop music Brit Awards awards ceremony in the United Kingdom. They are run by the British Phonographic Industry and took place on 26 February 2001 at Earls Court in London. Performances Winne ...

. The French edition of ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'' magazine placed ''The Virgin Suicides'' at number 49 on their list of the 100 essential French rock albums. In 2014, ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...

'' placed the album at number 11 on their "61 of the Greatest Film Soundtracks Ever" list. In 2019, ''

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'' placed the album at number four on their "Top 50 Best Movie Scores of All Time" list. On 3 June 2010, Air performed the full score with the band Hot Rats (with members of

Supergrass Supergrass are an English rock band formed in 1993 in Oxford. For the majority of the band's tenure, the line-up consisted of brothers Gaz (lead vocals, guitar) and Rob Coombes (keyboards), Mick Quinn (bass, backing vocals) and Danny Goffey ( ...

) at the

Cité de la Musique The Cité de la Musique ("City of Music"), also known as Philharmonie 2, is a group of institutions dedicated to music and situated in the Parc de la Villette, 19th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was designed with the nearby Conservatoire d ...

in Paris. To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the film ''The Virgin Suicides'', a deluxe edition of the album was released in June 2015 as a two-disc set and a super deluxe box set. The former contains two studio outtakes on disc one and a bonus disc of previously unreleased live recordings, while the latter includes the album on 180-gram red vinyl, an exclusive

picture disc Picture discs are gramophone (phonograph) records that show images on their playing surface, rather than being of plain black or colored vinyl. Collectors traditionally reserve the term picture disc for records with graphics that extend at lea ...

featuring previously unreleased live recordings, the "Playground Love" EP on 180-gram red vinyl, the two-disc deluxe edition of ''The Virgin Suicides'' on CD, a 16-page booklet featuring an unpublished Air interview, a film poster, a replica VIP laminate pass and a download card.

Background

According to

Jean-Benoît Dunckel Jean-Benoît Dunckel (born 7 September 1969) is a French musician best known for being one half of the French music duo Air, along with Nicolas Godin. In the 1980s, he formed the band Orange with Alex Gopher, Xavier Jamaux and Jean de Reydellet ...

, the album was recorded quickly. At first the music was inspired by the film and an attempt was made to synchronise the music with scenes from the film; towards the end of the process, the intention was to craft songs which could be listened to on their own.

Critical reception

''The Virgin Suicides'' received generally positive reviews from music critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 77, based on 16 reviews. In a 2020 review of the score,

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

's Paula Mejía praised the music for capturing the spirit of being a teenager, concluding, "Listening to the ''Virgin Suicides'' score on loop hasn't been so much an exercise in nostalgia, or even a means of escape. Reliving it is more of a prescient reminder—one I needed to hear as a teenager, and that I could use again today—that now is not forever."

Track listing

Personnel

Credits adapted from the liner notes of ''The Virgin Suicides''. *

– production, recording * Gordon Tracks – vocals, drums * Hugo Ferran – saxophone *

Brian Reitzell Brian Reitzell (born December 24, 1965) is an American musician, composer, record producer and music supervisor best known for his work on many film and TV soundtracks. He is notable for working extensively with the American film director Sofia ...

– drums * Pascal Garnon – drum recording * Stéphane "Alf" Briat – mixing *

Mike Mills Michael Edward Mills (born December 17, 1958) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer who was a founding member of the alternative rock band R.E.M. Though known primarily as the bass guitarist and backing vocalist of R.E.M., hi ...

– drawing

Charts

Certifications and sales

Release history

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Virgin Suicides, The 2000 soundtrack albums 2000s film soundtrack albums Air (French band) albums Ambient albums by French artists Ambient soundtracks Film scores Rock albums by French artists Rock soundtracks Virgin Records soundtracks