As Sony re-releases all of the Spider-Man movies in theaters as part of Columbia Pictures’ 100th anniversary, it’s worth going back and admiring the genius that was the original Spider-Man movie soundtracks.
“Hey, everybody, an old man’s talking!” Grandpa’s the name. If you are a Zoomer and unfamiliar with why a movie soundtrack to a Spider-Man movie would be a big deal, then let me regale you.
Back in the 2000s, superhero movies used to court these curated soundtracks filled with a bunch of alternative rock groups that the the youths loved, and some that they’d never heard of because filling out an entire CD with random bands can be tough business. Instead of listening to these on Spotify, we had to go to a Sam Goody or Circuit City, buy the CD and listen to it on a portable CD player until the disc got scratchy. We didn’t even communally have access to iTunes until Spider-Man 3 came out in 2007.
The Spider-Man movies easily won the contest for best soundtracks of superhero films from the 2000s, even though special commendation goes to Seether and Evanescence’s Amy Lee for randomly popping off with one of the most epic rock ballads of 2004 for that random Punisher movie with John Travolta.
In honor of Sam Raimi and the greatest web-slinger of cinema history (sorry, Tom Holland, it’s still Tobey Maguire’s to lose), we’ve tallied our favorite songs from those soundtracks. Sure, you might find them to be corny and dated, but let us old and decrepit millennials bask in the glories of our dorky adolescence.
We felt obliged to include a song from the Spider-Man 3 soundtrack, which paled in comparison to the first two. The main song from that threequel, a ditty by Snow Patrol (“Crashing Cars”) with a music video set against a Spider Man 3 school play, earns an honorable slot here. The song is perfectly fine, although it’s perplexing why a school would do a Spider-Man 3 play. We don’t know. No other song from that soundtrack made it here, but “Signal Fire” was the best of that bunch.
Don’t fret. “The Reason” legends Hoobastank were not one-hit wonders, as they provided a very solid banger for the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack (I’m allowed to keep my dignity after typing that sentence). “Did You” is a effectively moody headbanger (ugh, I’m sorry, what else do you use to describe a Hoobastank song from 2004) that helps the angsty tone of the second Raimi Spidey movie. Sure, it’s no “The Reason,” but what is? It’s still memorable, oh geez, 20 years later (silent scream because we’re all old).
I just discovered today that The Strokes provided a song for the first Spider-Man soundtrack, and because it’s The Strokes, one quick listen automatically vaulted it to the list ahead of the Hoobastank and Snow Patrol songs. I’d lose all my credibility if I ranked a Strokes song over those two, but there’s a Train song that is ahead of it that technically does a better job of setting the Spider-Man tone. But, c’mon, it’s The Strokes. If they provided a song for the Kangaroo Jack soundtrack, I’d consider putting it on this list because it’s The Strokes.
Train is the classic example of a band that was never as bad as you remembered, even though “Hey, Soul Sister” should be banished to the fifth realm so that it doesn’t provide temporary discomfort when you’re just trying to shop at the grocery store. However, “Ordinary” is arguably a bop, as it eloquently lays out the perils of being a superhero. You get the scope here of Peter Parker flying through New York City here as the Train guy belts out, “I’m anything but ordinary!” And he’s right! Spider-Man is anything but ordinary! Cohesion matters in these things.
The rare song on this list that isn’t only a good inclusion on the soundtrack but also factored into the actual movie in an effective way, “Hold On” accomplishes just about everything it needs to accomplish. It sets the scene up really well as Tobey Maguire’s Parker is trying to, y’know, hold on through some messy stuff in his personal and professional life. It’s also a real nice sing-along song if, for some reason, you and the family are all listening to the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack in the car. Hey, this is a judgment-free zone. It’s much, much better than listening to “Let It Go” again as far as movie songs go.
While Taking Back Sunday’s greatest contribution to soundtrack history was providing “Spin” for Madden 2007, the legendary emo-rock band’s stellar “This Photograph Is Proof (I Know You Know)” technically debuted on the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack. It’s a great song, even if it really has nothing to do with Spider-Man or web-slinging in any capacity. I mean, you could say the photographs of Spider-Man that Parker was giving J. Jonah Jameson for The Daily Bugle were good-enough proof that Parker was Spider-Man, and Jameson was just too dense to figure it out. So I guess that Parker knew but Jameson didn’t know? He just wanted pictures of Spider-Man.
Alien Ant Farm is one of the most underappreciated alt-rock bands of the early 2000s (*looks around for support*), and “Bug Bytes” is both an absolute “bring down the house” anthem for the first Spider-Man soundtrack and a song with the sensation of being bitten by a bug in the song title. It’s awesome and applicable! It’s the best song featured on any of these soundtracks that directly deals with Parker being bitten by a radioactive spider by a New York mile. That counts a lot on a list like this. Please stop looking at me like that. I promise I have friends.
Yellowcard was elite and remains elite, and this is one of the band’s better songs in general. It’s about the gifts and curses of being Spider-Man, delightfully on-point for the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack. We have absolutely nothing even remotely snarky to say about this song.
It’s Yellowcard, gosh darn it, have some respect, you heathens.
“I AM SO HIGH, I CAN HEAR HEEAAAIYYVUUUUUNNNNN!”
In 2002, I was 9 years old, and Chad Kroeger made me feel like I would live forever the first time I heard “Hero” on the radio. Literally, I would’ve gotten behind the wheels of a Ferrari and went flying down the highway blaring the guy from Nickelback singing indirectly about Spider-Man. I didn’t care. Rules didn’t matter, only heroism, hero stuff and being a hero on the wings of the gosh darn eagles, man, watching as we all fly away. Truly, this song is fully free of irony and just glorious in its effort to take you as high as the Spider-Man slinging around and saving the dang world.
This was my instantly favorite song when it came out, and unfortunately, taste got in the way in the years to come. However, this song still rules. It’s the perfect speakers-to-11 showstopper that captures the mood of what it was like to watch Spider-Man for the first time and have your block knocked off by how great it was. We used to be a proper country.
“Vindicated. I am selfish. I am wrong. I am right; I swear I’m right. Swear I knew it all along. And I am flawed. But I am cleaning up so well. I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself.”
Outside of the Gettysburg Address, these are the most hallowed words in our great nation’s history, as Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba belted that immortal stanza over the credits to Spider-Man 2. “Vindicated” is, no joke, one of the best songs of its kind from that era, unavoidably singable and just perfect in its ability to capture exactly what the sound of 2004 angsty alt-rock was. It’s also kind of the ideal summation of Spider-Man 2, as Parker is just left with a bunch of paradoxical conclusions, all at once amazing and awful and just so apt for the series as a whole.
When you think of music from a Spider-Man movie from the 2000s, it’s either “Hero” or “Vindicated,” and “Vindicated” is the better song. So be it. Hope dangles on a string like slow-spinning redemption, after all. Let’s pop on our portable CD players and pretend time never stopped after June 2004.
