Ghostbusters Soundtrack CD

Liner Note Author: Didier C. Deutsch.
The soundtrack for the 1984 blockbuster comedy Ghostbusters, which starred Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis as a New York-based team of spook exterminators, follows the most common soundtrack formula for summer blockbuster hits: throw on a bunch of pop songs that were heard in the movie only for a few seconds, combine them with a couple of excerpts from the original score, and -- voila! -- you have a soundtrack album. The highlights here are two tracks from Elmer Bernstein's score, Mick Smiley's "Magic," which played a major role in the film, and the witty Ray Parker, Jr. theme song, "Ghostbusters," which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. ~ Evan Cater
The soundtrack for the 1984 blockbuster comedy Ghostbusters, which starred Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis as a New York-based team of spook exterminators, follows the most common soundtrack formula for summer blockbuster hits: throw on a bunch of pop songs that were heard in the movie only for a few seconds, combine them with a couple of excerpts from the original score, and -- voila! -- you have a soundtrack album that makes for a very disjointed, schizophrenic listen, and does very little to conjure memories of the film. The major exceptions to the latter complaint, the songs which do conjure memories of the movie, are the two tracks from Elmer Bernstein's score, Mick Smiley's "Magic," which played a major role in the film, and the witty Ray Parker, Jr. theme song, "Ghostbusters," which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. (He lost to Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You.") Years later, Parker's refrain of "Who you gonna call?" has remained a part of the cultural lexicon. As for Bernstein's contribution, he has a tendency to write film music characterized by eerie keyboard meanderings which add little to the scenes he writes for. ~ Evan Cater
The soundtrack for the 1984 blockbuster comedy Ghostbusters, which starred Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis as a New York-based team of spook exterminators, follows the most common soundtrack formula for summer blockbuster hits: throw on a bunch of pop songs that were heard in the movie only for a few seconds, combine them with a couple of excerpts from the original score, and -- voila! -- you have a soundtrack album that makes for a very disjointed, schizophrenic listen, and does very little to conjure memories of the film. The major exceptions to the latter complaint, the songs which do conjure memories of the movie, are the two tracks from Elmer Bernstein's score, Mick Smiley's "Magic," which played a major role in the film, and the witty Ray Parker, Jr. theme song, "Ghostbusters," which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. (He lost to Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You.") Years later, Parker's refrain of "Who you gonna call?" has remained a part of the cultural lexicon. As for Bernstein's contribution, he has a tendency to write film music characterized by eerie keyboard meanderings which add little to the scenes he writes for. [Arista/Legacy reissued the Ghostbusters soundtrack in 2006 with two bonus tracks: a full 11-minute version of "Disco Inferno" and a 12" single remix of "Ghostbusters."] ~ Evan CaterWhich CD - Performance 8 / Sound 8
CD Review - Performance 6 / Sound 7
CD Review Reader Consensus - Performance 8.5 / Sound 8.4