Best soundtrack song of the year? Contradictory Playlist post of the year?
Here’s your first listen to Charlyne Yi’s “Magic Perfume,” a track that is essentially the first single off the “Paper Heart” soundtrack album, details of which we exclusively revealed. But to recap, the album comes out August 4 and features Alden Penner (ex member of Montreal indie-rockers the Unicorns and Clues) and Zach Condon from Beirut, plus a score written by Michael Cera and Yi.
Anyhow, her “Magic Perfume” song totally rules and no, we’re not kidding. Her voice may be a little thin, but the songwriting on the track is excellent and recalls early Weezer when they were re-purposing ’50s doo-wop group chord progressions and melodies and transposing them onto alt-rock (no, really, listen to early Weezer and you’ll hear a lot of similarities).
This endearing song, taken straight from the movie, charmed our ass off during the film and it’s just super sweet and infectiously catchy. Wait, what’s that about us hating twee? Ideologically yes, especially when it’s woe-is-me, but if you can’t appreciate this song…. well, you’re just nuts, sorry (and despite what you may think we have no hard black-and-white line that can’t be crossed, there’s always exceptions to the rule). The film’s director Nicholas Jasenovec tells us the version of the song on the soundtrack is a studio version, which we’d be interested to hear as well.
If you love this song as much as we do, you might want to record your own rendition. Prefixmag is holding a contest for fans to record and send in their own cover version. Charylne Yi herself will be judging the songs. The lucky winner gets an Apple Ipod. The contests ends August 7, the same day “Paper Heart” hits theaters in limited release, so get cracking.