Sucker Punch: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack album for the film of the same name. It was released on March 22, 2011 by WaterTower Music. The album consists of covered songs, mainly by the film's stars. Emily Browning sings on three songs, while Carla Gugino and Oscar Isaac perform a cover of Roxy Music's "Love Is the Drug" as a duet. Recording artists Björk, Skunk Anansie, Emilíana Torrini, Queen, Carla Azar, Alison Mosshart and Yoav also have songs on the soundtrack.
All of the covers on the album were produced by Marius de Vries and Tyler Bates, who utilized orchestral and rock sounds. Director Zack Snyder wanted the songs to add depth, dimension and meaning to the fantasy aspects of the film. The recording sessions began in September 2009. Part of Browning's audition for her role in the film included recording herself while singing. Snyder liked her voice and invited her to sing the Smiths' song "Asleep". The crew and Smiths' frontman Morrissey were happy with the result, and Browning recorded two more songs for the soundtrack, including Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" which is played during the film's opening sequence.
The album received generally positive reviews, and critics considered it one of the best soundtracks of the year. Browning was praised for her performance throughout the album, mainly on "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)". Sucker Punch reached number twenty-two on the Billboard 200, and the top of the Top Soundtracks chart. Internationally, the album reached the top fifty in Australia, New Zealand, Austria and Germany.
Background and development
As with the soundtrack for Watchmen, director Zack Snyder decided to go with covers instead of original songs, saying "If you go with the original song, you just get the moment. But if you go with covers you also get all of the baggage you bring to it, [...] I like the baggage. It kind of resonates and rings across time, it's not just of the moment." The soundtrack was produced by composer Tyler Bates and musical producer Marius de Vries. While Bates' job was initially only writing a musical score and helping the song transitions, the composer ended up working closely with de Vries as "the songs and the score just began bleeding into one another". The only track in which de Vries worked alone was the remix of Björk's "Army of Me".
Snyder wanted the songs to add depth, dimension and "meaning to the sequences they exist within", as the film includes "multiple levels of reality". de Vries noted the director tried to use songs instead of an original score "so that the lyrics could help navigate the way through the complex scenes and illuminate Babydoll's state of mind." Bates said "the songs serve as the link to the conscious world of Babydoll" while the score "was designed to simply underscore the sense of reality in the various alternate realities/action". On the song selection, Snyder said that the tracks were chosen to "resonate" and give the viewer "sort of a nostalgic feeling", and de Vries added that the compositions had to fit the film's "themes of escape and hope, and redemption through the imagination."
The original script of the film included parts where the characters sang, but it did not make the final cut, and de Vries said, "It was never going to be an opera, or even going to be a musical. It was very unlikely even to have any 'break into song' moments within it, but the fact that we designed it so that it could I think gives it that sort of strange, music-driven resonance." References to both Roxy Music's "Love Is the Drug" and Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" were seen in the original script, with the former being used in a musical sequence performed by actors Carla Gugino and Oscar Isaac "in the style of a Bob Fosse/Moulin Rouge kind of vibe", and the latter being picked by Snyder for his belief that it was "perfect for our World War I [action sequence]". Bates considers Emilíana Torrini's cover of "White Rabbit" to be the soundtrack's standout. Nine songs are featured in the soundtrack, with Bates saying others were considered and discarded for among other reasons, veto from the original artists and "lyrics too on the nose".