‘There’s Something About Mary’ – 5 Essential Soundtrack Cuts

“Whatever happened to the Dandy Warhols?” we are constantly asking ourselves as we are drifting off to bed. ‘Bohemian Like You’ is/was a f---ing awesome song. And so is this nugget from the ‘Mary’ soundtrack, which originally appeared on the Dandy’s debut album, ‘...The Dandy Warhols Come Down.’ It has that cool techno-meets-hippie-rock thing going on, and it's a reminder of how ahead of their time the Dandies were.

We’d like to imagine that Evan Dando of the Lemonheads was going through a big Vaselines phase when he sat down and banged out ‘If I Could Talk I’d Tell You’ (co-written by Eugene Kelly). It’s just one of those great additions to the already-amazing Lemonheads canon that could fit on any of the band’s ‘90s albums -- it just happens to be on the lesser-respected ‘Car Button Cloth’ (1996). And it dresses up the soundtrack of ‘Mary’ like a silk pashmina.

If you don’t know the French female-fronted Ivy, you should hit your Alternative Rock High School social studies books a little harder. Based in New York, this early-‘90s band features the breathy, hot vocal stylings of Dominique Durand and songwriting abilities of Andy Chase and Adam Schlesinger, a first-rate tunesmith you might know from his "other job" fronting Fountains of Wayne. This little ditty originally appeared on the band’s 1997 album ‘Apartment Life.’ Just listen to that horn part -- it’s quintessentially ‘90s fluff, and for that, we dig it.

If you read our ode to Ben Lee’s ‘Grandpaw Would’ on this Diffuser.fm list, you know how passionate we are about the acoustic Aussie crooner. ‘How to Survive a Broken Heart’ -- which Lee co-wrote with indie legend Jonathan Richman, who appears in ‘Mary’ as a kind of Greek chorus -- sounds like a ‘Grandpaw’ outtake and fits snugly among the rest of the ‘90s tracks on the soundtrack.

We didn’t want to put just one Jonathan Richman song at the top of the list, because, well, they’re all really damned good, and Richman plays a big part in the movie -- just like that dude who shows up in ‘The Life Aquatic’ and does all those Bowie covers. So topping our list are Richman’s ‘There’s Something About Mary’ theme song, ‘True Love Is Not Nice,’ ‘Ahora es Mejor,’ and ‘Let Her Go Into the Darkness.’