Feature
Looking Back
The Trainspotting soundtrack at 30
With Trainspotting: the Musical opening this summer, we look at how the film's OST captured a cultural zeitgeist
Britpop. Cool Britannia. Girl Power. The promise of Tony Blair being elected as Prime Minister. The prioritisation of social justice and equality. The advent of the internet, as society stepped toward the pearly gates of the digital age. By today’s standards, everyone had a relatively healthy relationship with technology. Nightlife was at its peak. All of the aforementioned is largely why the 90s is regarded as a utopian decade, especially in the UK, where it felt a genuine corner was being turned.
Culturally, Britain felt like the centre of the universe. But to those that lived through the era, it wasn’t always exactly rosy.
Outside of major cities and university hotbeds, the rest of the country was dogged by post-Thatcherite decay and crumbling infrastructure, whilst casual racism and sexism was still sadly common. Things were still very shit if you weren’t in the right place.
Which is exactly what Trainspotting revealed – and what made the 1996 movie resonate. Set in Edinburgh’s then grey, grim district Leith, the characters frequent various squalid environments that transform into something altogether unworldly via their heroin trips. In one scene in the novel, they hang around a derelict railway station where alcoholics and drug users languish, hence the title.
But Trainspotting also had a soundtrack that encompassed it all. The intoxicating highs and the desperate lows, the adrenaline boost of optimism and the comedown crashes of being stuck in a doom loop of inevitable disappointment.
Based on Irvine Welsh’s 1993 debut novel of the same name, the film became a genuine cultural moment. In celebrating music more than most other films of its era, its soundtrack was intrinsic to the film’s success. There were three distinct angles to the music featured in Trainspotting – the music the central characters loved, such as Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and David Bowie; the anachronistic use of Britpop behemoths, despite the story loosely being set in the late 80s; and the ravey hedonism of Underworld and Leftfield which connected the film’s soundtrack to the acid-house scene that Irvine Welsh himself was immersed in whilst first writing the novel.
Watching Trainspotting – either for the first time upon its initial release, or nowadays – it’s impossible to separate the soundtrack from the film’s most impactful scenes.
The frenetic opening where Renton pounds the street pavement – pursued by security guards whilst he delivers the “Choose Life” monologue – simply wouldn’t be the same without Iggy Pop’s pulsating ‘Lust For Life’ propelling him and compadre Spud onwards. The serenity of Brian Eno’s ‘Deep Blue Day’ after Renton submerges himself down the drain pipe of “The Worst Toilet in Scotland”. When an overdosing Renton sinks into the carpet to Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’. Blondie’s femme fatale new wave classic ‘Atomic’ (via a Sleeper cover) playing when Renton first lays eyes on Diane in the grotty nightclub. With ‘Dark Train’, Underworld intensified Renton’s despairing heroin withdrawal whilst confined to the four walls of his bedroom (we all remember the baby scene, right?), then later raises the euphoric relief to celestial levels with the gorgeous synth intro to ‘Born Slippy (Nuxx)’ with Renton snatching the drug deal money, escaping the entrapment of his “so-called mates” and finally breaking free of his old life/old self.
All music choices were deployed immaculately by director Danny Boyle, amplifying the film’s kinetic energy. Even still, ‘Lust For Life’ and ‘Born Slippy (Nuxx)’ are seldom mentioned without a micro-discussion about Trainspotting taking place immediately before or after.
Contemporary bands like Blur, Primal Scream, Elastica, Sleeper, and Pulp were all part of an all-star cast too. Oasis reportedly turned down the opportunity to write an original song for the film, based on the fact that Noel Gallagher thought it was about actual trainspotters – according to the film’s costume designer Rachel Fleming. But even without Britpop’s bolshiest brothers, the Trainspotting soundtrack introduced British music to an audience across the Atlantic, and beyond, where it might have not penetrated beforehand.
Then we have the immortalisation of faded music icons. During the nightclubbing scene – aptly soundtracked by Iggy Pop’s strutting ode to his Berlin-based debauchery in ‘Nightclubbing’ – Spud and Tommy loudly discuss the likes of David Bowie and Lou Reed losing their magic, going off the boil. Whilst that was definitely the case when the story was set, Trainspotting was the rejuvenating shot in the arm that Reed needed, and Iggy so desperately deserved.
‘Perfect Day’ achieved classic status as a rediscovered gem and was, weirdly, even covered by a roster of stars (like Tom Jones, Boyzone, Emmylou Harris, Elton John, Bono, Shane MacGowan, M People’s Heather Small, and even David Bowie) in 1997 for BBC’s Children In Need charity. It was originally recorded for the channel’s promotion campaign, but was released as a single due to overwhelming public demand, topping the UK charts for three weeks.
Because of Iggy Pop’s heavy involvement in Trainspotting, Iggy’s fortunes swiftly changed. His former manager Art Collins revealed in an interview with The Times six months after the film’s initial release that there were more than 20 requests to use his music in movie soundtracks. “I think it’s because people who were his fans, and were once sort of ashamed to admit it, have grown up,” he said. “And now they run ad agencies and movie studios.”
In the pre-internet age, the Trainspotting soundtrack was a real trendsetter and tastemaker for both teenagers and young adults. Sod that, even actual adults. It was so popular, another second album was released made up of music that didn’t make the theatrical cut, or was inspirational to the film-makers. Irvine has taken this sentiment and expanded on it for the original music he and Stephen McGuinness have created for the upcoming musical.
The long-mooted and now fully realised Trainspotting musical is set to open at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket in July 2026, three decades after the film tapped into the cultural zeitgeist. To Welsh, making a musical of his intellectual property must have felt like a no-brainer.
Find tickets for Trainspotting: the Musical here.
