With Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) as the bona fide anarchistic hero(ine) of 2020 (sorry Joker, your time has come and gone), Birds of Prey could do none other than present its audience with a hip hop-infused soundtrack as equally fast-paced and empowering as the movie itself. As such, the selections for Birds of Prey: The Album offer a nonstop tour de force of ass-kicking, “I need a man like I need a hole in the head” inspiration.
From the instant it commences with Doja Cat’s “Boss Bitch,” featured during a scene of Harley out with so-called friends at Roman Sionis’ (Ewan McGregor) club as she still takes advantage of keeping her breakup with Joker a secret (not wanting to lose that precious immunity, after all), we’re given the thesis statement of the narrative. In the video for it (released January 24th as part of the film’s promotional method of putting out a single a week starting from January 10th until the movie arrived in theaters February 7th), Doja Cat herself parties in the same club with scenes of Harley intermixed. She also emulates the bat-wielding blond with a “Good Night” bat of her own for fight scenes in trash-filled alley that are interwoven with some of Harley’s own. As she declares, “I don’t wanna go with the flow,” we get the impression this is the very mantra playing in Harley’s head on repeat.
That is, when it’s not WHIPPED CREAM’s “So Thick” featuring Baby Goth, a taunting track that makes plenty of shade-laden reference to the Joker with the lyrics, “Diamonds on my wrist, ice, diamonds on my chains/If you’re gonna play with me, you better know who run the game/You can try to act a clown for your fifteen minutes of fame/After that, I’ll still be lighting shit up from the main stage.” Lighting up the stage Harley is, particularly in a now neo-iconic sequence of her doing a sendup of Marilyn Monroe as Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Something that Megan Thee Stallion and Normani incorporate in their own video for the album’s lead single, “Diamonds” (once you see the movie, you’ll understand why diamonds are such a running motif on this sonic safari). Borrowing from Marilyn’s signature crooning of the line, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” the duo also incorporates plenty of “isms” touting the overall uselessness of men (particularly when material things tend to give so much more pleasure, as Ari already takes note of on “7 Rings”), including, “Diamonds are my new boyfriend/So that mean I will never, ever fuck with you again/And I ain’t never need ’em, so it’s so easy to leave ’em/And I be doin’ me, I ain’t never tryna please ’em.” One only laments that Megan Thee Stallion felt obliged to pull a 50 Cent (who notoriously “rhymed” nympho with nympho) move in pairing Harley the person and Harley the motorcycle together as a couplet.
From there we transition to Saweetie featuring GALXARA’s “Sway With Me,” an uptempo ditty featuring a sample of “Sway,” originally composed by Luis Demetrio and made popular in America by famed cover versions from the likes of Dean Martin in 1954 and, later, Rosemary Clooney and Cuban bandleader (because Cuban bandleaders were quite the rage in the 1950s) Pérez Prado in 1960. Subversively intermixing the retro with the new (just as promos for Birds of Prey and Harley Quinn herself), GALXARA high-pitchedly warns, “So follow me into the dark/Break off a piece of your heart/Sell it for, sell it for, sell it for money and cars/Come out, wherever you are/My motivations are what my temptations are.” Saweetie elaborates on the independent theme of the song and album with a line reminiscent of Grande’s famed “I want it/I got it,” instead noting, “See it, if I want it/I’ma take that (sway)/See it, if I want it, I’ma take that (I take what I want).” Just like Harley and her fellow Birds of Prey.
Slowing down the pace and shifting the tone to one of greater seriousness, Charlotte Lawrence’s “Joke’s On You” (very Joker pun-oriented indeed) is a dramatic, Nina Simone-sounding number. Fittingly, it plays during the sequence in which a drunken Harley decides to take a stand against being imprisoned by her feelings to the Joker–and the clout he holds over her as a result of his “protection”–by commandeering a giant tanker of a trunk and driving it straight into the direction of the chemical plant where she sacrificed her humanity to the Joker, falling into a vat of acid that he “saves” her from (even though the only reason she swan-dived into it in the first place was to prove her love and devotion). The symbolism of it all sends a huge message to the entirety of Gotham, along with Lawrence’s powerful declarations soundtracked over it: “My heart’s gone bad, now it won’t beat for you/You had your laugh, now I won’t play the fool/I’ve lied for you and I liked it too/But I’m black and blue from bleeding for you/You struck the match, burned me out so fast/Look what we had, now it’s turned to ash.” That last part made literal by the sight of Ace Chemicals going kabluey as Harley willingly sets the bounty on her own head at the price of her literal and metaphorical freedom from the Joker.
A liberation cemented by Maisie Peter’s “Smile,” a song that Harley herself could have written, accented by the venomously jeering tone, which cautions, “No more Mrs. Sweet and Miss Nice/No more Mrs. Fuckin’ Polite/Time for Mrs. Takin’ What’s Mine.” Harley does just that indeed, with the help of Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), Helena Bertinelli a.k.a. Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) and Dinah Lance a.k.a. Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell). With the lyric, “Got bridges to burn and places to run/Yeah, this smile is a loaded gun,” the album segues seamlessly into CYN’s “Lonely Gun.” Against a moody, irascible backbeat, CYN tells a third person tale with some very overt first person experience as she recounts, “Said he’d be there for her, but he don’t know how/She’s a lonely gun and he can’t seem to find the trigger.” Like that old saying, “A girl is a gun,” this song takes it a step further by inferring she’ll find a way to achieve release–to pull her own trigger, as it were–without his help. Again, the running motif on this soundtrack (and in the movie) is that men are pretty much obsolete. Even though “he said, ‘Come to me ’cause I could be just what you need’/But he don’t satiate, no, he don’t.”
This ties in nicely with the rebellious rage of Halsey’s “Experiment on Me.” Discussing the still commonly accepted norm of women being told to act “ladylike,” Halsey wails, “Seen not heard is what they told me/I look too good to be this lonely/Oh grab this loaded gun/So hopeless but I’m still a romantic/Bloodstained mouth, I’m gonna blow a kiss.” Played during the scene during which Harley takes on a number of unleashed prison inmates, the message it sends about women taking back their own power, about showing the boys that they have just as much fight in them if not more is intensified by Halsey’s banshee cry of, “Lock up your sons, make way for the daughters/You be the lamb and we’ll be the slaughter/You burned the witches, now you’re defenseless/Who needs a Y with this many Xs?” Very much a valid question.
The frenetic and cantankerous vibes persist with Jucee Froot on “Danger,” a track that punctuates Harley’s battle in the Evidence Room as she seeks to shake Cassandra Cain out from the tree of the police. “It’s an all girls party and no boys can come,” Jucee Froot shouts, reminding the listener that, yes, in fact, Birds of Prey: The Album is comprised entirely of female musicians.
And with that feminine energy comes the power to cast out all negativity, the way Harley finally decides she must with the Joker, a dynamic seemingly explored on K.Flay’s “Bad Memory,” which finds the Illinoisan chanting, “Feeling good, feeling great/I’m a don now/Like bye-bye, I’m set free/Not on my mind, no lie, you’re just a bad/You’re just a bad memory.” Luckily, Harley finds out that bad memories can be erased with margaritas and new friends that share a similar lust for mayhem of a more fun-loving nature than the Joker’s. Maybe that’s why she’s “Feeling Good,” as the Sofi Tukker song on the album is called. While the rhythmic beat holds pace with the rest, the communiqué behind it is somewhat digressive from a feminist standpoint, with lead singer Sophie Hawley-Weld purring, “It’s really simple, I’m feeling good/I feel myself and I’m feeling understood/Pet me, feed me, let me rest/Take me on a walk and tuck me into bed/I’m just a needy feline/Stroke my head and I’m fine.” This is maybe how Harley’s hyena, Bruce, feels, but certainly not Harley herself, prone to unpredictable bouts of belligerence as she traipses through Gotham (with or without an egg sandwich in tow).
As the album draws to its third act, Lauren Jauregui’s “Invisible Chains” is a return to the slower sonority of “Joke’s On You.” Possessing an almost Evanescence-like sensibility, Jauregui makes use of the “birds” imagery inherent in the movie’s title by crooning, “I’ve been trapped in a cage/Sorrow said I should stay/But I found beauty in this pain/Gave me strength to break these invisible chains.” Elsewhere, she adds, “I don’t believe in your fairy tales and goals.” It’s a defiant assertion that plays right into what Birds of Prey is all about: not defaulting to the long-bandied myths about men being the only source of salvation for women.
This is where the irony of Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s (also singing the song as Black Canary in Roman’s club) cover of James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” The song in its MC5 incarnation also appears, fittingly, on the soundtrack for another highly underrated tale of girl power, 2010’s The Runaways.
Atlanta’s own Summer Walker provides one of the more sunshiny (must be her name) feels of the record via “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby,” a somewhat out of place cut with expressions of maudlin love like, “Ain’t no use/I can’t help myself/I’m hung up/No doubt I’m so in love with you/For me, there’s no way out.” Unless this is meant to refer to her maternal(ish) love toward Bruce or even Cassandra Cain, it’s unclear where this song really fits into the narrative (actually it would have gone well over a scene of Harley fondling her breakfast sandwich).
The closer and pièce de résistance of the album is a sweltering cover of Pat Benatar’s 80s essential, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” When taken on by ADONA, who imbues it with all manner of ominous foreboding, the song is given new life. More goading than ever, the climactic orchestral arrangements perfectly build up to the now signature funhouse scene wherein Harley and her Birds of Prey take on Roman’s henchmen. This gives way to the only musical faux pas of the movie, Heart’s “Barracuda,” which, noticeably, does not appear on the album. Nor does Kesha’s “Woman,” the song that plays as Harley drives off into the proverbial sunset with her egg sandwich and Cassandra Cain in the front seat with her own. The only thing, therefore, that could make the soundtrack more perfect–as much of an instant classic as the movie itself (despite egregious box office returns)–would have been for Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à L’amour” to make the list. Alas, songs from the trailer rarely have a chance to make the cut.
