Merchandising gen x: The singles soundtrack album (1992/2017)

Abstract

While it was not associated with a blockbuster film or a major children’s franchise, the Singles Original Soundtrack (OST) album was highly successful, in part because of the way it tapped into Generation X’s adoration of alternative rock. The album successfully negotiated Gen X tensions—tensions that are also endemic to most fan cultures—between cultural consumption and anti-commodity attitudes. This essay uses Singles as a case study to demonstrate first that soundtrack albums, though often overlooked, are a key facet of movie merchandising, and second, that movie merchandising can, and in this case does, prove more profitable and culturally significant than the film to which it’s attached. The significance of the Singles OST album is demonstrated by the high-profile twenty-fifth anniversary re-release of the album, which traded on Gen X nostalgia.