Listen to Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Hateful Eight’ Soundtrack
'The Hateful Eight' may be the Quentin Tarantino movie that never was. The writer/director, upset about the script leaking online, decided to put a stop to the upcoming western before it ever really began. While we may never actually see the movie, the script is online and now another big piece of the movie is here to help you imagine a Tarantino movie in your head: the soundtrack.
Besides perhaps Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson, few directors working today use popular music as well as Quentin Tarantino. His 'Pulp Fiction' soundtrack sold over 2 million copies in just two months after the film was released. While some of Tarantino's latest films have eschewed the pop influences from his earlier work ('Inglourious Basterds,' for example, was mostly made up of spaghetti western soundtrack excerpts, with the exception of David Bowie's "Cat People"), 'Hateful Eight' would've been a mix of the old Tarantino and the new.
So, how do we know this if the film isn't getting made? Like the script, a list of songs Tarantino planned to use in the film leaked online, giving us a better look at the style of film he wanted to make. (According to The Film Stage, an anonymous user posted the soundtrack list online, as it was part of the initial script package sent to actors.) Like his recent works, there's a healthy helping of Ennio Morricone, but also a modern hip-hop track, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters and modern rockabilly singer JD McPherson.
We've gone through the list and made a handy YouTube playlist so you can listen to all the songs, in the order Tarantino presented them. If you've found yourself a copy of the 'Hateful Eight' script (we won't link to one here, but if you're enterprising enough, you should be able to find it), you can read the script while playing the music in the background. It might not be the same as watching 'The Hateful Eight' in theaters, but considering we may never be able to do that, this is the next best thing.