If Will Smith's 1997 jam "Men in Black" taught us anything, it's that music can be a powerful tool in movie marketing. While tie-in songs aren't as popular now as they once were, director David Ayer's DC supervillain team-up movie Suicide Squad is making an effort to bring them back with Suicide Squad: The Album, a collection of original songs and new covers (along with a few classics) that will be featured in the movie.
Each of the Suicide Squad trailers released so far has been built around a familiar song (or two), and the selected music has covered a broad range of pop genres. The very first trailer featured a modern cover of The Bee Gees' 1968 release "I Started a Joke," remixed by ConfidentialMX with a vocal performance by Becky Hanson. The second trailer got hearts pounding with Queen's classic hit "Bohemian Rhapsody." Finally, the third trailer kicked off with Australian singer Grace Sewell covering another song from the 1960s, "You Don't Own Me," before segueing into Sweet's 1973 rock anthem "The Ballroom Blitz."
Suicide Squad's soundtrack isn't relying on nostalgia alone, however. Yesterday saw the release of a music video for twenty one pilots' original song "Heathens," which showed the band members incarcerated in Belle Reve Penitentiary (home of the Suicide Squad) and included a few snippets of new footage from the movie. Now another original song and another tie-in music video have arrived online: "Sucker For Pain," a collaboration between Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa and Imagine Dragons that also features Logic, Ty Dolla $ign and X Ambassadors. The six artists even got their own custom Suicide Squad style portraits:
Aside from repeated mentions of the word "squad," the song is more of a thematic accompaniment to Suicide Squad than a literal one, focusing on general themes of behaving badly rather than name-dropping characters or describing scenes from the movie. "Heathens" was similar; that song made mention of psychopaths, murderers and a freakshow, making it a fitting part of Suicide Squad's soundtrack, but it also works as a standalone track.
Like "Heathens," the "Sucker For Pain" music video features a few snippets of new footage from Suicide Squad - including a quick new look at Jared Leto's Joker and a shot of Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) reaping the painful rewards of hanging out on the bars of her cage. It's also, once again, set mainly in Belle Reve. We can expect at least one more of these music videos still to come, as Leto filmed new footage in his Joker costume for Skrillex and Rick Ross' "Purple Lamborghini" - the first song on the soundtrack.
Suicide Squad: The Album is expected to be released August 5th, 2016.
Suicide Squad opens in U.S. theaters on August 5, 2016, followed by Wonder Woman on June 2, 2017; Justice League on November 17, 2017; The Flash on March 16, 2018; Aquaman on July 27, 2018; an untitled DC Film on October 5, 2018; Shazam on April 5, 2019; Justice League Part Two on June 14, 2019; an untitled DC film on November 1, 2019; Cyborg on April 3, 2020; and Green Lantern Corps on July 24, 2020.