Every Song In The Deadpool & Wolverine Soundtrack

Constructing a soundtrack album is a gentle — and perhaps lost — art. This author is old enough to remember the 1990s heyday of movie soundtracks, when film producers would regularly license charting pop hits, obscure deep cuts, upcoming rappers, and underappreciated indie bands to construct carefully curated and meticulously produced albums that lived happily in your friends' cars all summer. There was a time when an unsuccessful film could recoup a lot of its theatrical losses with overwhelming soundtrack record sales. See: "Dead Man on Campus."

As the music industry collapsed in the early 2000s, however, soundtrack records fell out of favor. Movie songs became mere playlists, neither arranged on a CD in any cogent order nor lending themselves toward a general thematic thrust. We '90s teens can now whine (as is our wont) that soundtrack albums are, in the '20s, rarely more than "pile of neat songs." The last major movie soundtrack to get any attention was 2014's "Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Mix, Vol. 1," although that album cribbed its '70s gutbucket selections heavily from other movies ("Hooked on a Feeling" was in "Reservoir Dogs," "Spirit in the Sky" was in just about everything).

The soundtrack for "Deadpool & Wolverine," however, seems to be positioning itself to be accepted as the Album of the Summer, should it become popular enough. On X, formerly Twitter, the official "Deadpool" movie account released the track listing of the upcoming superhero action-comedy's soundtrack, and it is predictably odd. Get ready for a splattery sneeze of '60s crooners, classic country, '00s pop punk, a few showtunes, and, uh, Jimmy Durante?

The track listing for "Deadpool & Wolverine" is as follows:

• "Only You" — The Platters
• "Bye Bye Bye" — *NSYNC
• "Angel of the Morning" — Merilee Rush & The Turnabouts
• "Slash" — Stray Kids
• "Iris" — Goo Goo Dolls
• "The Power of Love" — Huey Lewis & The News
• "A Ramblin' Man" — Waylon Jennings
• "You Belong to Me" — Patsy Cline, feat. The Jordanaires
• "The Lady in Red" — Chris de Burgh
• "I'm With You" — Avril Lavigne
• "The Greatest Show" — from "The Greatest Showman," performed by Zac Efron, Zendaya, Hugh Jackman, Keala Settle, and the ensemble
• "You're the One That I Want" — from "Grease," performed by Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta
• "I'll Be Seeing You" — Jimmy Durante
• "Make Me Lose Control" — Eric Carmen
• "You're All I Need to Get By" — Aretha Franklin, feat. the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
• "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" — Green Day
• "LFG (Theme from 'Deadpool & Wolverine')" — Rob Simonsen

As one might intuit, several of those songs are likely included for ironic reasons. No one on the planet, not even Chris de Burgh, likes the song "The Lady in Red," and the makers of "Deadpool & Wolverine" likely included it to punctuate a sexy scene of, well, a literal lady in red. Trailers have confirmed that Lady Deadpool will appear in the film, and she may very well be the Lady in Red.

Ditto "Angel of the Morning," the 1981 Juice Newton version of which was featured in the original "Deadpool." The Merilee Rush version above is a 1968 cover of the 1967 original by Evie Sands. It would have been more appropriate to have included Vagiant's 2009 punk cover.

The overwhelming number of soft ballads on the "Deadpool & Wolverine" soundtrack point to a film infused to the gills with irony, though. Eric Carmen's soft-ass "Make Me Lose Control" is certainly not being used to back up an earnest, romantic moment in an R-rated, ultra-violent comic book movie. It also may be meant to evoke Carmen's "Hungry Eyes," which was featured in "Dirty Dancing." Star Ryan Reynold and director Shawn Levy are certainly not above pointed nostalgic references.

Naturally, the inclusion of the opening number from "The Greatest Showman" is a dig at Hugh Jackman, who returned to the role of Wolverine after his death in the excellent "Logan" in 2017. In the "Deadpool" movies, the character mocks Jackman a lot, mostly playfully. The inclusion of Wolverine in "Deadpool & Wolverine" is just as much a winking joke as much as an expansion of comic book movie lore.

"Slash" by Stray Kids is an original song written for "Deadpool & Wolverine" by the noted K-Pop group. The Rob Simonsen track, likewise, is original for the film. "LFG" likely stands for "Let's F***ing Go."

There is something vaguely disappointing in a "Deadpool & Wolverine" soundtrack that wasn't designed to define the character earnestly. One might expect playfully dirty, hard-edged songs by bands like the Vandals or GWAR. Instead, it's mostly ballads and humorous winks. More timely songs might have dated the soundtrack, of course, but also provided a potentially classic album. If it were on CD, and it was 1998, would you buy it?

"Deadpool & Wolverine" opens in theaters on July 26, 2024.