Released around the time of the film's DVD release, the soundtrack to Mean Girls is nearly as sharp and knowing as the movie is. The bulk of the songs tie into the movie's mostly witty dissection of how high-school girls jockey for position in the social food chain, and the complex mix of admiration, emulation, and jealousy in their friendships.
The Donnas' cover of "Dancing With Myself" and
Pink's "God Is a DJ" offer two very different kinds of tough-girl allure, while
Peaches' creepy "Operate" and
Kelis' fantastic "Milkshake" reflect the movie's playfully menacing undercurrent (and since "Milkshake" is basically a three-minute tutorial in sex appeal, it works especially well). Appropriately enough,
Mean Girls also has its fair share of cheerfully nasty musical catfights. On "Hated,"
Nikki Cleary sings sweetly, "You're the E! True Hollywood story about a two-faced strip-mall whore"; on "Mean Gurl,"
Gina and Gabriel Rene warn an old friend that sells them out to hang with the in crowd, "Don't you know what happens to popular girls?/They end up pregnant with curlers in their hair on Prozac."
Taryn Manning's raspy sneer is perfect for
Boomkat's version of
Blondie's quintessentially bitchy "Rip Her to Shreds," and
Blondie itself turns up later with "One Way or Another." It only makes sense that the band is featured so prominently on the soundtrack, since after all,
Blondie perfected mixing sweet with tough and pop with punk in the first place. Ballads like
Samantha Ronson's "Built This Way (Slow Remix)" and
Anjali's "Misty Canyon" (which kind of sounds like the name of a Mean Girl) offer a change of pace, but -- much like the movie --
Mean Girls is at its best when it's snarky and sassy. Likewise,
Fatboy Slim's remix of
Pierre Henry's "Psyche Rock," All Too Much's "Sorry (Don't Ask Me)," and Rajiv Surendra's "Mathlete Rap" (the movie's talent-show-stopping performance) add some XY chromosomes to the mix, but
Mean Girls is at its best when its music matches its title. ~ Heather Phares