The Hangover

The Hangover (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack to the 2009 film The Hangover directed by Todd Phillips, released by New Line Records on June 9, 2009. The soundtrack featured 12 songs consisting of music by Kanye West, Danzig, The Donnas, Usher, Phil Collins, The Belle Stars, T.I., Wolfmother and The Dan Band, while the film itself consisted over 20 songs. It featured music from multiple genres, including pop, rock, heavy metal and death metal music owing to Phillips' roots in the rock, punk and subcultural genres. Background The selections of music from the film were mostly due to Phillips' connection with punk rock, heavy metal music and other genres. He pointed Danzig's "Thirteen" that appears earlier in the film, saying "that song in particular, that version is actually a pretty rare version. The movie is about bad decisions and Las Vegas is about luck. And this song is about being unlucky". He initially used the El Vez song "It's Now or Never" in the film's beginning for the title sequence, and after which Danzig's song plays changing the context of the film. A song from The Cramps was also used in the film as Phillips, at the age of 14, had used to watch the band's punk show for the first time, that changed his life and "It informed everything afterwards for me musically". The sequence where Mike Tyson plays air drums to "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins, was not written in the script, but were created on-set as Phillips felt "hen I shot the first day with him, I realized he was really playful. I was like, 'We should have him doing something crazy and memorable.' I wanted to think of a song that was probably playing in all of the gyms when he was working out at his peak. Something that was on the radio, something you could see him training to. A song like 'Eye of the Tiger' but four years later [laughs]. It all happened in a day." Phillips also asked Ed Helms to create a piano ballad for the tiger song, despite not being featured in the script as Helms was a piano player and used to play covers of Elton John songs during the schedule breaks, which insisted him to do one for the film. The song was written within twenty minutes.