T2: Trainspotting is a rare film sequel that is as good as the original by taking its characters to their logical conclusion. These dudes are bad people, and they’re stuck with each other as their punishment. Like the film itself, T2’s soundtrack was always going to suffer in comparison to the original. Trainspotting, and its soundtrack, are now pieces of iconography forever associated with Cool Britannia. The music from the film packaged together an oral bible of the era: Britpop acts like Blur and Pulp, hard edged nostalgia with Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and Blondie, topped of with the rave culture sound-tracked by Primal Scream and Underworld.
T2’s soundtrack suffers because 2017 isn’t part of a great musical era, rock is in the toilet, hip hop, R&B, and pop, still rule the charts, and nothing feels dangerous. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe everyone thought this way in 1996 (I was 6 so all I was thinking about was the Power Rangers), maybe being part of the present makes you blind to how important this current musical landscape will look ten, or twenty years from now. T2 is mainly about getting older, realising that youth, and vitality can be fleeting, and the bad things you’ve done will catch up with you one way or another. Its soundtrack emulates this well, but can’t earn its place beside the original because in pop culture lightning doesn’t strike twice.
