Boyhood

Boyhood (Music from the Motion Picture) is the soundtrack album to the 2014 film of the same name directed by Richard Linklater. The album, released on July 9, 2014 by Nonesuch Records, consists of 15 songs from popular artists recorded and released during 2000s and early-2010s, that are compiled by Linklater and music supervisor Randall Poster. The film features more than 50 songs that are not included in the album. Development While filming Boyhood in 2002, Linklater wanted to musically convey the emotions of the characters, by adding an orchestral score, but felt "too authorial, like adding a voiceover". Instead, he decided to use each song for the film to be "something that the characters would actually listen to, in that time, place and lives", which had to be "songs of that time". Linklater added "music is obviously such an evocative nostalgia or memory trigger, for a place and time". Linklater originally intended to ask the protagonists Ellar Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater, what kids at their age were listening to, but they found that their tastes were too specific for themselves and not for the characters, the play. Hence he hired few youngsters to write narratives about songs that were about to include in the soundtrack, as a litmus test, which he described it as "fun to get educated". Linklater used the characters as touchstones for the songs, that are not soundtracked to the characters' real-life examples, especially the musical aspirations of the protagonist's father (Ethan Hawke) shaped the soundtrack. Hawke's lines directly address the accompanying music, from a scene in which he deconstructs a song from Wilco to one in which he gives his son, a music CD of The Beatles songs. Linklater felt that he initially wanted to play George Harrison's "What Is Life" which he felt a bit "on-the-nose", hence, he used Paul McCartney's "Band on the Run" to capture the "eternal-ness of Beatles' music". Most of the film's music were picked after the decade-long shooting was completed. Linklater described the logistical advantage of that strategy, as "extreme luck in terms of licensing songs from major artists", and also picked recent songs allowing Linklater to know which songs would stand the test of time. For the film's later sequences, consultants had approved Linklater's music tastes as his guesses on which songs will hold that power for years.