This came out in 2001 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Cameron Crowe leads a charmed existence. He wrote for Rolling Stone in the ’70s, he was married to Nancy Wilson from Heart for a couple of decades, he directs movies with the likes of Kate Hudson (Almost Famous) and Tom Cruise (Jerry Maguire and now Vanilla Sky).
Naturally, when a guy like Crowe puts out a soundtrack, he doesn’t have to deal with the usual slate of leftovers and B-sides. No, he gets original material from his artists. And I’m not talking about some Snoop Dogg track; I’m talking R.E.M. (who revisit their Reckoning-era track All the Right Friends) and Paul McCartney (who contributes the breezy acoustic title cut). Toss in some tasteful classics from Bob Dylan (the live Fourth Time Around from ’66), Peter Gabriel (Solsbury Hill) and even The Monkees (Porpoise Song from Head), along with cutting-edge fare from Radiohead (Everything in Its Right Place), Iceland’s Sigur Ros (Svefn-G-Englar) and Looper (the techno-funky Mondo ’77) and you’ve got a soundtrack almost as charmed as Crowe’s life. Almost.
