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SoundTRAX: "The Great Gatsby"

The cover for "The Great Gatsby" soundtrack has the title surrounded by an art deco design.
Interscope Records
/
Warner Bros. Pictures

SoundTRAX is a dive into notable music from iconic films and TV shows every Monday-Thursday at 8:10.

Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was released on this day 10 years ago.

Did anyone really need another version of it? Probably not.

But love it or hate it, Baz knows how to do splashy visuals with big stars.

And he's famous for bringing modern music to period pieces, like he did with Moulin Rouge.

For the Gatsby soundtrack, though, he decided to up his game even more by naming Jay-Z as executive producer.

Luhrmann explained to Rolling Stone:

"The question for me in approaching Gatsby was how to elicit from our audience the same level of excitement and pop cultural immediacy toward the world that Fitzgerald did for his audience? And in our age, the energy of jazz is caught in the energy of hip-hop."

Jay-Z also brought other genres to the party, with both original tunes from the likes of the xx and Florence + The Machine, as well as covers from Jack White, Brian Ferry and Jay-Z's better half, Beyoncé, with André 3000.

But for today's #SoundTRAX selection, I'm going with a Lana Del Rey tune she wrote with Rick Nowels expressly for the film.

For the 10th anniversary of Baz Luhrmann's version of The Great Gatsby, it's Lana Del Rey with "Young and Beautiful."

Mel is the WFPK morning host. Email Mel at mfisher@lpm.org.

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