Hunger Games soundtrack: Surefire hit?

Movie soundtracks tend to bring out the very best in pop stars.

For certain artists, the best song they'll ever write in their whole career will be for a movie.

It might be because movies are larger than life, and the songwriter ends up aiming for a similarly epic vibe.

It's probably also because they are presented with a completed narrative and they can extract the juice from it for their own purposes.

The only Eminem song I can stand to listen to is Lose Yourself, which was written for his flick 8 Mile.

Paramore's Decode, written specifically for Twilight, is by far their most exciting work.

I could go on but you probably get the point.

Then there are those songs - some by one-hit wonders - which are hits because of the movies.

Eye Of The Tiger is Survivor's only song to have actually survived over the years.

That said, the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a treasure trove.

Take, for example, Coldplay's new song Atlas for the movie, which opens here Thursday.

"Carry your world / I'll carry your world" goes the chorus, and it's pretty obvious that the "Atlas" with the world on her shoulders in this particular scenario is one Katniss Everdeen.

There are a number of great songs on the Catching Fire soundtrack, which was just released this week.

The great Patti Smith's Capitol Letter is a cowboy song with Katniss as the protagonist, and it's filled with darkness and drama.

To me, it's something close to a masterpiece.

Lorde's cover of Everybody Wants To Rule The World by Tears For Fears could have been sung by an embittered Katniss herself.

SLEEPY AND SENSITIVE

The National have come up with the characteristically sleepy and sensitive ballad Lean, similar in theme to Atlas.

My only complaint is that there's no Civil Wars, the Americana guy-girl duo that should own these Hunger Games soundtracks.

For the first film, they wrote and performed the Grammy-winning Safe & Sound along with Taylor Swift.

It's been the best song of her career by a country mile.

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