Lorde's Hunger Games soundtrack, Frozen, and the renewed power of songs from films

Albums of the year lists are starting to roll in but the focus is in the wrong place — the real music stars of 2014 come from the movies. Lorde’s new soundtrack to the latest film in the Hunger Games franchise, released last week, might be the coolest film and music tie-in since Trainspotting, and elsewhere the sounds of the screen have dominated the charts.

Film soundtracks have provided two of the biggest songs of this year. Pharrell’s Happy, from Despicable Me 2, was officially the UK’s best-selling song of 2014 at the last count and Let It Go, sung by Broadway star Idina Menzel in the Disney smash-hit Frozen, feels like the most ubiquitous, especially if you have young daughters.

As a music critic, I listen to a lot of great stuff. As a father, I can say without hesitation that I listened to Let It Go more than anything else this year. I have to answer questions about it: “Daddy, what’s a kingdom of isolation?” Even I can’t resist that mighty key change at the climax, though, and I’m gratified that the “sod it” message of the song has proved powerful enough to gain an adult fanbase as an LGBT anthem.

The film is huge, of course, but the album has swallowed 2014 whole, particularly in the US. Over there, Taylor Swift’s 1989 has just become the only artist album to sell more than a million copies this year, and she has a considerable way to go before she comes close to Frozen’s 3.5 million.

The scale of this success has helped music gain parity of importance in a film campaign, where once the songs were often forgettable spin-offs to sit beside the Happy Meal toys. There’s still plenty of sub-classical orchestral guff, coupled with B-side-standard band songs that you’d need superpowers to spot in the actual movie. But done right, the soundtrack can outlive the film. No one would have been looking to a children’s cartoon sequel to provide the most popular song of the year until Pharrell’s breezy, handclaps-and-sunshine hit did just that.

And he might do it again, too, with this week’s announcement that he and Gwen Stefani have written a new song, Shine, for the Paddington movie, though it won’t be unveiled until the US release in January.

Lionsgate made a smart move with the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 that is sure to be repeated by film studios in the future. It’s a compilation of multiple artists but handed over to teen-pop sensation Lorde to “curate”.

Unlike soundtrack king Quentin Tarantino’s technique of making dusty old songs (and actors) seem cool again by placing them in striking new contexts, here the music is all new and offers an impeccable guide to what’s hot. It’s as edgy and intriguing as any artist album out right now.

“As someone with cinematic leanings, being privy to a different creative process has been a unique experience. I think the soundtrack is going to surprise people,” Lorde has said. As an 18-year-old from humble beginnings who is fast becoming the voice of her generation, the New Zealander born Ella Yelich-O’Connor is the perfect choice to provide songs for the arrow-slinging exploits of Katniss Everdeen.

The soundtrack allows her to be back at the forefront of pop, more than a year after the release of her debut album, without really doing that much. She’s got two new songs on the tracklist, a powerful original called Yellow Flicker Beat and a Bright Eyes cover, Ladder Song, as well as offering a vocal cameo on a Stromae composition. But she also gets to demonstrate her fine taste with commissions from up-and-coming rapper Ruary and fast-rising R&B singer Tinashe, and show her influence by featuring major stars Ariana Grande, Grace Jones and Kanye West.

The dominant control of one musician gives the songs a unity of feel that soundtracks don’t usually manage, when chase sequence and snogging songs by different bands are forced together. There are exceptions, of course. You may have dug out Simon and Garfunkel’s soundtrack to The Graduate when the film’s director Mike Nichols died last week — a masterclass in sustained atmosphere. More recently, the icy Eighties synths of Cliff Martinez’s score for Drive in 2011 upped the arthouse thriller’s hip factor more than a few notches. As an indication of the film’s power, last month it was the first movie chosen for a high-profile new Radio 1 experiment, Radio 1 Rescores, for which DJ Zane Lowe persuaded artists of the calibre of Bastille, Laura Mvula and The 1975 to provide fresh tunes for an alternative soundtrack.

Lorde is bridging two types: taking control of an overall sound and alerting listeners to well-chosen songs by others that they may not have heard before (like Tarantino or Wes Anderson). It’s the best of both worlds, and sets her up nicely for a second artist album that will see her become a real superstar. If Frozen leaves you cold, her new set proves that soundtracks are still cool.