Can someone please explain to me why some movie soundtracks are released with the songs out of order? I was listening to John Williams’ awesome score from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the other day; the track order runs counter to the order in which the pieces were heard in the film. With a rock CD, this generally isn’t a big deal; that’s what the “shuffle” function was created for. With movies, however, you’re trying to accompany a linear story through music, and mixing up the track order defeats that. In Temple of Doom‘s case, only a few tracks are out of order, but it’s still a rather jarring effect.

The score to my favorite film of all time, Army of Darkness, fares considerably worse. The opening piece is placed first, but everything else is completely mixed up. In fact, a memorable piece from towards the end of the film is the second track on the disc! It’s incredibly annoying.

Doesn’t mixing things up like that violate an unwritten law somewhere? Cripes, you don’t see movie DVDs released with their scenes shuffled, do you? The same should apply to their soundtracks!