Ranking All The Songs from The Crow Soundtrack
There are no bad songs on The Crow Soundtrack. It’s rare to find a movie where the music was as good as the darkly gothic visuals, but this was one of the best albums to come out of the mid-90s and easily the best motion picture soundtrack in 1994. If you haven’t seen the movie, then you missed out, but merely listening to the music is enough to transport you to the magical dystopian nightmare playground that spawned The Crow. Meanwhile, The Crow Soundtrack will instantly transport anyone lucky enough to see this movie in theaters when it was released to the year Kurt Cobain died. This music speaks to its era in a way no other soundtrack or album can even come close to touching, so we’re ranking all the songs from The Crow Soundtrack.
14- Time Baby III (A Re-recording of Time Baby II) by Medicine
Time Baby III is a superbly written and executed love song. Anyone who has ever seen The Crow will remember Time Baby II from the film, but the soundtrack doesn’t have that song. Instead, it features this remix by Cocteaus’ Robin Guthrie, with added vocals by Elizabeth Fraser. As AV Club explains, “The band (Medicine) performs as itself in The Crow during a club sequence, performing “Time Baby II” from the band’s 1993 EP 5ive. But the original soundtrack features Medicine’s “Time Baby III,” a remixed version of the same gorgeous love song.” While both versions of this song are good, the confusion got it dropped to the bottom of our list. Once you see the movie and watch the original performance, this song feels almost like a too-clean radio edit of a song you know is full of swearing or the Kidz Bop version of WAP.
13- Milquetoast by Helmet
Milquetoast was the first single off the album, Betty. The excellent guitar and drums compliment the lyrical style so well that it’s hard to imagine this song only reached number thirty-nine on the US Mainstream Rock Billboard. As a hard rock song, Milquetoast, also known as Milktoast, is outstanding and memorable, which is no doubt why it was a part of The Crow soundtrack.
12- After The Flesh by My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult
Even if you think you don’t know this song, you’ve probably heard it. After The Flesh is one of the best-known songs by My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, a band that helped bring industrial music into the mainstream. While ATF is an ideal match for the dark, harsh, gothic-dystopian world of The Crow, it wouldn’t have made the cut if the movie had been made just a few years sooner because the genre wasn’t well recognized or in demand. Subsequently, having a song like this on this soundtrack brought My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult to millions who hadn’t yet been exposed to industrial music.
11- Slip Slide Melting by For Love Not Lisa
Slip Slide Melting came out in 1993, just one year before The Crow. The song was on For Love Not Lisa’s debut album, Merge. Although Sip Slide Melting is often considered one of the underrated gems from The Crow Soundtrack, it’s hard to call any song on a triple-platinum cult classic album genuinely underrated. That said, there’s no denying that FLNL isn’t as well known as Pantera or The Cure.
10- Golgotha Tenement Blues by Machines of Loving Grace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CY0ZjtuHvs
Machines of Loving Grace, a band from Tucson, Arizona, is known for its versatile sound. Golgotha Tenement Blues was written exclusively for The Crow and had a sound all its own. The guitar riff is instantly recognizable and helps set the tone for The Crow.
9- Ghostrider (A Suicide Cover) by Rollins Band
Ghostrider is a song based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. While he has a popular movie and a TV series now, when it was written in 1977, dark comics like Ghostrider and later The Crow were not yet mainstream. Rollins Band does a masterful job of covering this oft-used song for The Crow Soundtrack.
8- Color Me Once by Violent Femmes
If there’s one overarching theme to The Crow’s music other than ‘dark’ or ‘rock,’ it is that every track contains truly next-level guitar work. Like all the songs on this soundtrack, Color Me Once by The Violent Femmes certainly has impressive guitar work, but it also has a unique and rough vocal track that elevates the whole feel of the song. After almost forty years, this song is still a fan favorite partially because it was on The Crow Soundtrack.
7- SnakeDriver by Jesus And Mary Chain
Snakedriver has an upbeat sound. The tambourine gives it a strangely cheerful undertone that directly contradicts the lyrics. Snakedriver has a deeply embedded sense of ennui and hopelessness when you listen to the words.
6- Darkness (A Re-recording of Darkness of Greed) by Rage Against The Machine
Darkness deserves more thought than most people give it. The blunt, unapologetic lyrics are a thing of beauty, neither giving quarter nor taking any steps to comfort the listener. Alternately, the music is sometimes smooth and charming, and others abrasive and harsh, but consistently excellent.
5- Big Empty by Stone Temple Pilots
Big Empty is one of the slowest and most soulful tunes on The Crow Soundtrack. It’s no surprise that this Stone Temple Pilots classic song won an MTV Movie Award for Best Song Featured in a Movie or that it was the only single from the soundtrack. The band would later include Big Empty in their second album and Greatest Hits.
4- Dead Souls (A Joy Division cover) by Nine Inch Nails
Originally Joy Division released Dead Souls in 1979. However, the industrial feel of this Nine Inch Nails cover slides seamlessly into The Crow Soundtrack and helps bring the cult classic film to life around the characters.
3- The Badge (A Poison Idea Cover) by Pantera
The Badge speaks for itself. Whether you know the original or this fantastic cover by Pantera, it’s not an ambiguous song at all. As Underthemooch points out on Song Meanings, “For some reason, most metal covers of punk songs miss the point completely, but this one is perfect. I think it’s because they pretty much left it alone (except for the extended guitar solo).”
2- Burn by The Cure
The Cure is almost as much of a cult classic as a band as The Crow is as a movie. It seems almost like a foregone conclusion to include a track by this band on the soundtrack. Burn is a fan favorite, and James O’Barr, who created The Crow comic book, is also a fan of The Cure.
1- It Can’t Rain All The Time by Jane Siberry
In an album packed with nothing but outstanding music, one had to be the best, and it is this, It Can’t Rain All The Time by Jane Siberry. If a song could be a fresh scar on a wound, this is how it would sound and feel. The hauntingly beautiful tune was not only perfect for the movie but beloved by fans of The Crow and music in general. This song saw ridiculous, but well-deserved amounts of radio play and became utterly iconic like the film. It Can’t Rain All The Time, more than any other song in The Crow, captures the overall feeling of the story with its deep near-hopeless lows and abiding sense that this too shall pass, though you’ll never truly forget it.
Final Thoughts
Most movie albums do not make the Billboard Top 200, let alone peak at number one. It is a testament to how truly exceptional The Crow Soundtrack is that it went triple platinum. If you haven’t yet experienced the music of this movie, we strongly recommend it to any rock fan. A soundtrack like this comes along once or twice in a generation, and in the 1990s, this was the one.
