THE ELVIS MOVIE SOUNDTRACK: FULL BREAKDOWN

A star-studded cast, a music icon and a soundtrack to match? Biopics don’t come much bigger, better or more flamboyant than Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. We take a deep dive into the Elvis movie soundtrack, spotting which of The King’s hits have been chosen, and the modern stars who have provided intriguing covers.

The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll

Director Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis explores the life and music of Elvis Presley (Austin Butler), seen through the​ prism of his complicated relationship with his enigmatic manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). The story delves into the complex dynamic between Presley and Parker spanning over 20 years, from Presley’s rise to fame to his unprecedented stardom, against the backdrop of the evolving cultural landscape and loss of innocence in America. Also central to that journey is one of the most significant and influential people in Elvis’s life, Priscilla Presley (Olivia DeJonge).

You know you’re watching a Baz Luhrmann film from the opening moments, featuring a glam, rhinestone-encrusted version of the Warner Brothers logo. The film begins with a kinetic montage in which Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s manager, dramatically collapses at home. His voiceover, against a stirring choral backdrop, positions him as the man who created Elvis Presley – ‘and yet, there are some who make me out to be the villain of this here story’.

Was he guilty of ‘massive fraud and mis-management’? Was he responsible for Elvis’ death? The montage brings in scenes of gambling and prescription drug-taking, plus Elvis taking to the stage in Vegas, singing ‘Glory, Glory Hallelujah’, with a few bars of the iconic classical piece ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ that film aficionados will recognize from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey spliced in for good measure.

It is quite an opening sequence.

Elvis Soundtrack 2022

You want a movie with end-to-end music? Look no further than the Baz Luhrmann Elvis soundtrack – over the course of the nearly three hour-long film, there are only a few minutes which don’t feature music.

1. Suspicious Minds – Elvis Presley
2. Also Sprach Zarathustra/An American Trilogy – Elvis Presley
3. Vegas – Doja Cat
4. The King and I – Eminem, CeeLo Green
5. Tupelo Shuffle – Swae Lee, Diplo
6. I Got a Feelin’ in My Body – Elvis Presley, Stuart Price
7. Craw Fever – Elvis Presley
8. Don’t Fly Away – Elvis Presley, PNAU
9. Can’t Help Falling in Love – Kacey Musgraves
10. Product of the Ghetto – Elvis Presley, Nardo Wick
11. If I Can Dream – Måneskin
12. Cotton Candy Land – Stevie Nicks, Chris Isaak
13. Baby, Let’s Play House – Austin Butler
14. I’m Coming Home – Elvis Presley
15. Hound Dog – Shonka Dukureh
16. Tutti Frutti – Les Greene
17. Strange Things Are Happening Every Day – Yola
18. Hound Dog – Austin Butler
19. Let It All Hang Out - Denzel Curry, PlayThatBoiZay
20. Trouble – Austin Butler
21. I Got a Feelin’ In My Body – Lenesha Randolph
22. Ede of Reality – Elvis Presley, Tame Impala
23. Summer Kisses/In My Body – Elvis Presley
24. 68 Comeback Special (Medley) – Elvis Presley
25. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child – Jazmine Sullivan
26. If I Can Dream – Elvis Presley
27. Power of My Love – Elvis Presley, Jack White
28. Vegas Rehearsal/That’s All Right – Austin Butler, Elvis Presley
29. Suspicious Minds – Elvis Presley
30. Polk Salad Annie – Elvis Presley
31. Burning Love – Elvis Presley
32. It’s Only Love – Elvis Presley
33. Suspicious Minds – Paravi
34. In the Ghetto – Elvis Presley, Nardo Wick
35. Unchained Melody – Elvis Presley

The Elvis soundtrack album was produced by director Baz Luhrmann and Anton Monstead, who also worked on Luhrmann’s previous silver screen hit, The Great Gatsby. How many songs are in the Elvis movie soundtrack? Well, as you’d expect from a Baz Luhrmann project, the answer is: plenty. The online version has 36 tracks, whereas the CD contains 22, and there’s a mix of actual recordings of The King’s songs, together with tracks performed by Austin Butler.

So far, the album has spawned five singles: ‘Vegas’, ‘Trouble’, ‘The King and I’, ‘If I Can Dream’ and ‘Tupelo Shuffle’. It’s also nabbed a nomination for the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media, together with being chosen as 2022’s best soundtrack by both the Hollywood Music in Media Awards, and the American Music Awards.

Baz Luhrmann is known for bringing together modern artists into his period dramas, from the fusion hits of Moulin Rouge! to Jay Z’s hip hop reworkings on The Great Gatsby. The Elvis soundtrack is no different, and features artists as diverse as Stevie Nicks, Kacey Musgraves, Diplo, Eminem, Eurovision winners Måneskin and Doja Cat, who sings ‘Vegas’ on the soundtrack:

Luhrmann and Yola, who plays Sister Rosetta Tharpe, often dubbed ‘the inventor of rock ‘n’ roll’, share their thoughts on the story of Black music in America and Elvis’ cultural legacy:

The director explained to ComingSoon.net why the film shows that, ‘no Black music, no Elvis’ and the thinking behind the Elvis soundtrack featuring a number of high-profile hip hop artists: ‘In a way, there’s a throughline into even Gatsby, because in Gatsby’s period, Fitzgerald writes about a Black street music that was very edgy and it was called jazz. And everyone thought that jazz music would be a fad. But when Jay-Z and I worked on Gatsby … [with] that kind of jazz, it’s hard to make an audience feel that this is really edgy street music. So, we translated it into hip hop. Same thing a bit with Elvis. The great thing about hip hop is it refuses to know boundaries.

‘With Lil Nas X doing country music as rap, it’s completely blind to any wall that might stop it from gathering and making something new. In a way, that’s what all that music is. Music is always transforming, changing itself, blending, going somewhere unexpected. I think I kind of make movies like hip hop artists make music, in a way. They take to many other forms and they make something completely new.’

In the early parts of the film, Luhrmann shows how Gospel music affected Elvis as a child, and his connection to the style and music of Beale Street – aka The Home of the Blues. The audience is introduced to BB King, Little Richard and Sister Rosetta Tharpe through Elvis as a character, showcasing artists, Tharpe in particular, who they may not be familiar with, but whose influence on Elvis, his music and performance style were key.

Don’t Step on His Blue Suede Shoes…

As for Austin Butler playing a musical icon – it seems destiny played its part. The actor told Deadline that, ‘I had never heard it before in my life, but in the month prior to hearing about Baz making the film, an Elvis Christmas song was on the radio, and I was kind of just goofing around, singing along to it. And my friend said, “You’ve got to play Elvis.” But it was such a long shot, I just laughed and pushed it to the side. And then a couple of weeks later I was playing the piano, and my friend said, “I’m serious. You’ve got to figure out how you can get the rights to maybe write an Elvis film or something.” I said, “That’d be amazing, but there’s no way that that’s going to happen.’”

A week later, his agent called and told him about Luhrmann’s film.

‘Well, immediately I got chills, because of the synchronicity of it all, I thought, “I got to just give it everything I got.” So, I started prepping from that day as though I was going to be making the movie.’

The parallels are striking: Butler’s mother died when he was just 23 – the same age as Elvis was when he lost his beloved mother. And, of course, Butler can really sing like Elvis. When it comes to who sings in the new Elvis movie, the answer is that most of the tracks on the soundtrack are the original Presley recordings, but several feature Butler’s performance instead.

Another key scene in the film is Elvis performing ‘Trouble’ at Russwood Park in front of hordes of screaming, hysterical fans, resulting in a near riot:

This scene was also used as part of the second official trailer, positioning Elvis as a divisive cultural force, before flashing back to his first TV performance, and introducing the idea of Colonel Tom Parker controlling Presley and his career, and the love story with Priscilla.

The trailer also includes the version of ‘Hound Dog’ sung by Shonka Dukureh in the film (playing Big Mama Thornton), plus snippets of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Suspicious Minds’.

The Final Track

What was the last song on the Elvis movie? Baz Luhrmann decided to use the footage from the final time he performed on camera, singing ‘Unchained Melody’.

Luhrmann told Deadline that, ‘He sings the best he ever sings. It’s so moving that that’s the death scene. That’s the farewell.’ Producer Gail Berman persuaded Authentic Brands Group, who control the licensing and merchandising rights to Elvis Presley, to let the footage be shown.

ABG were anxious because, ‘Elvis is so unattractive in it. He’s discombobulated. He can hardly put two words together.’ Austin Butler studied the footage and copied it exactly, but Luhrmann knew he still wanted to follow the biopic trope of showing the real artist at the end. So, he cut from Butler’s version to the original.

He revealed that the sequence gets to the emotional heart of who Elvis really was: ‘there’s a moment when Elvis is singing the song and he looks to the audience and he smiles like a little boy: “Am I doing good? Am I good?” And you realise that there’s still a little boy in there trying to make up for a dad going to jail, trying to please and be loved, and have people love each other. It’s so childlike. And then we cut to the real Elvis.

‘I mean, we could have run through with Austin, but I knew we were going to miss the really important final thing: Austin’s humanised Elvis in a way that I don’t think Elvis has been humanised for so long. You have to remind people that it’s OK that his body was corrupt and all the discombobulation with the drugs. Inside was still this beautiful kid who just wanted to love and be loved in return.’

The Score

As for the rest of the incidental music, that’s down to Elliot Wheeler. Elvis is Wheeler’s third project with Luhrmann (following The Great Gatsby and TV series The Get Down). The composer familiarised himself with an astonishing number of Presley songs: 800. He told Filmspeak.net that the score includes repeated themes to denote specific characters or relationships, taking different Elvis songs and turning them into thematic stings.

For example, ‘The Ferris Wheel’, an early scene when the Colonel is, ‘pitching the notion of becoming Elvis’ sole representative. And within that, we have their romance theme which is ‘Glory Glory Hallelujah.’ We’ve got Elvis’ theme with his mother, Gladys (Helen Thomson), which is ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ Elvis’ theme with his audience which is ‘Unchained Melody.’ We’ve got ‘Suspicious Minds’ in there too.’

Country singer Kacey Musgraves covers ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ when Elvis and Priscilla’s love story is introduced, while Doja Cat appears in a portion of Shonka Dukureh’s cover of ‘Hound Dog’.

Wheeler also featured new music by Doja Cat to give modern audiences an understanding of what bustling Beale Street was like back in Elvis’ day. ‘For something like Beale Street, which was the most happening place for African American music in the 1950s, we were like, well, if Elvis is going down onto Beale Street now, who would he be hearing? Well, it would be Doja Cat.’

Elliot Wheeler explained that, ‘What we’ve tried to do with this film is give [modern audiences] a take on what it must have felt like to see Elvis in his prime. There’s a nostalgia people associate with those recordings. But we’re trying to show a 21st-century audience how Elvis changed Western culture.’

Awards

So far, the Elvis soundtrack has been nominated for two Grammy Awards – the Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media, and for Best Rap Performance (‘Vegas’). It was also the winner of the American Music Awards’ Favourite Soundtrack. The film as a whole is up for a host of Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Sound and a highly deserved Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for Austin Butler. He’s already taken home the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama), so it’s a movie that’s proven to be loved by both critics and fans. We’ve got the whole soundtrack on heavy repeat.

Music That Makes Movies

Baz Luhrmann and his team obviously had a huge array of Elvis hits to pick from for their soundtrack. Looking for movie music for your project? We have a vast choice, in every mood and genre, for you to license. Plus, there are new albums of original, high quality music released every fortnight. From drama to romance, action to comedy, and not forgetting those all-important trailers, if you’re spoiled for choice, then check out our hand-picked playlists instead.

And for more stand-out soundtracks, The Edit has a host of picks from the silver screen, from the best Black History movie soundtracks to the most romantic movie choices (including Baz Luhrmann’s ‘spectacular Spectacular’ Moulin Rouge!)