In praise of Juno’s whim­si­cal folk-pop soundtrack

When I was 14, my school organ­ised an exchange with a Russ­ian school. When the stu­dents arrived from Moscow, they per­formed a musi­cal show­case at morn­ing assem­bly that includ­ed var­i­ous folk songs as well as, for some unknown rea­son, Roy Orbison’s ​‘Pret­ty Woman’. When it was my school’s turn to return the favour in Moscow, friends of mine who were tak­ing part in the exchange decid­ed to treat their Russ­ian coun­ter­parts to var­i­ous acoustic ren­di­tions of songs from the Juno sound­track. I’m not sure whether The Moldy Peach­es or Antsy Pants record sales shot up in Moscow as a result, but I’d like to think they did.

When the film was released in 2007, its sound­track was adopt­ed by my cir­cle of friends as the sound­track to our own teenage years. Like the char­ac­ter of Juno, it’s a poignant mix of angsty and dreamy that struck a chord with girls who taught them­selves gui­tar, exper­i­ment­ed with colour­ful hair dye and prob­a­bly had an account on blog­ging site Tum­blr. Luck­i­ly, our obses­sion with Juno didn’t extend to copy-cat teen preg­nan­cies, but in the USA the film’s impact was so pro­found that the rise in teenage moth­ers in its wake was dubbed by Time mag­a­zine as the ​“Juno Effect.”

As Juno turns 15 this year, a bonafide teenag­er itself, the film and its sound­track have arguably stood the test of time more than its con­tem­po­rary pop cul­ture arte­facts (name­ly Flo Rida, Trans­form­ers and foot­less tights). Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a time cap­sule of mid-2000s indie with the likes of Belle and Sebas­t­ian and Cat Pow­er and a trib­ute to off­beat six­ties rock via The Kinks and The Vel­vet Under­ground, the sound­track deft­ly man­ages to be endear­ing­ly quirky with­out veer­ing into cutesy.

This is per­haps best rep­re­sent­ed by Bar­ry Louis Polisar’s ​‘All I Want Is You’, a song dis­cov­ered by direc­tor Jason Reit­man quite by acci­dent. Reit­man had been search­ing iTunes for a song with a sim­i­lar name when he stum­bled upon the track from the children’s folk singer’s 1977 album ​‘My Broth­er Thinks He’s a Banana and Oth­er Provoca­tive Songs for Chil­dren’. Polisar’s pep­py love song plays over the title sequence as an ani­mat­ed Juno walks down the street swig­ging from a large plas­tic bot­tle of Sun­ny D. The tune sets the tone per­fect­ly for the film: heart­felt and fun.

When pick­ing music for the film, Reit­man reached out to lead actor Elliot Page to advise on what he thought Juno would be lis­ten­ing to. He played Reit­man The Moldy Peach­es’ ​‘Any­one Else But You’, a track which the direc­tor decid­ed should close the film. It ends with Juno and her boyfriend Paulie Bleek­er (an orange Tic Tac-obsessed track run­ner played by Michael Cera) per­form­ing the duet in the street out­side his house. ​“Here is a church and here is a steeple, we sure are cute for two ugly peo­ple,” Page mum­ble-sings to Cera as the cam­era pans slow­ly out from the teenage cou­ple. It’s a sweet, but not over­ly sen­ti­men­tal, end­ing to a film that match­es its opti­mistic but not-quite-Hol­ly­wood hap­py ending.

Page is also to thank for anoth­er of the film’s most mem­o­rable musi­cal moments. She intro­duced Reit­man to the music of Cat Pow­er, whose mes­mer­ic cov­er of Phil Phillips’ ​‘Sea of Love’ plays as Juno lies in Paulie’s arms after giv­ing birth and hand­ing her baby over to adop­tive moth­er Vanes­sa (Jen­nifer Gar­ner). It’s a bit­ter­sweet scene made all the more skin-tin­gling by Chan Marshall’s melan­cholic vocals and lilt­ing harp accom­pa­ni­ment. ​“A lot of her music paral­y­ses me, it’s so beau­ti­ful,” said Page in a pro­mo­tion­al inter­view about the film’s sound­track. ​“She’s just one of those sta­ples in my life.”

But it’s singer-song­writer Kimya Dawson’s con­tri­bu­tion that makes the Juno sound­track tru­ly excep­tion­al. Daw­son was one half of The Moldy Peach­es and when Reit­man dis­cov­ered her work through Page, he decid­ed her lo-fi folk-meets-punk sen­si­bil­i­ty matched the tone of his film per­fect­ly. Reit­man saw Dawson’s irrev­er­ent lyrics and upbeat melodies as the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to Dia­blo Cody’s whip-smart script and flew the film’s score com­pos­er Mat­teo Messi­na out to Dawson’s home­town of Seattle.

Togeth­er, they record­ed var­i­ous instru­men­tal ver­sions of her songs for the sound­track. ​“He just sort of turned off the lights and ate some cook­ies and act­ed sil­ly and told me to play them as gloomi­ly and emo­tion­al­ly as I could,” said Daw­son in a 2008 inter­view with Enter­tain­ment Week­ly. Dawson’s work helped pro­pel the sound­track to chart-top­ping suc­cess and it was even award­ed a Gram­my for Best Com­pi­la­tion Soundtrack.

Com­pi­la­tion sound­tracks are a hard thing to get right, and it can eas­i­ly feel like a direc­tor is shoe-horn­ing in tracks they like that ulti­mate­ly form an inco­he­sive jum­ble. Juno’s is a les­son in care­ful cura­tion and the impor­tance of ask­ing col­lab­o­ra­tors for advice. The end result has a tru­ly per­son­al feel to it, like a mix­tape made by your best friend. I will be for­ev­er grate­ful for the way it brought Daw­son from Seattle’s musi­cal under­ground to the bed­rooms of teenage girls around the world.

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