Album review: Contemporary gloss doesn't quite shine on Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Soundtrack 

Jack White and Kacey Musgrave are great, but some of the other workings of Elvis songs aren't quite worthy of the king of rock'n'roll 

Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Soundtrack has the likes of  Eminem, Doja Cat, and Stevie Knicks covering the King's songs. 

Inspired and indulgent, often in the same heartbeat, Baz Luhrmann is the ultimate marmite film-maker. And his new Elvis biopic looks set to be one of his most divisive projects yet, as it fillets the facts to lionise Elvis as a sort of 20th-century Jesus.

Luhrmann’s fairytale retelling of the rise and fall of a rock ’n roll messiah has spawned a soundtrack in its own image. What a hodgepodge it is, with such unlikely bedfellows as Eminem, Doja Cat, Eurovision winners Måneskin and Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks all applying their own, often aggressively distinctive, spin on the Presley catalogue.

This is through-the-looking glass Elvis – an attempt to put a contemporary gloss on the most pastiched, parodied and worshipped singer of the past 100 years. And, just like Luhrmann’s filmography, the results are wildly varied: it is easy to imagine some Elvis fans entranced by the results, others appalled.

Elvis is a ghost swirling throughout. His spirit manifests as a haunting vocal as the record opens with a snatch of Suspicious Minds. But we’re soon off the deep end as Doja Cat brings TikTokker energy to Vegas, her groove-heavy take on Hound Dog.

The sense that Elvis has left to the building, potentially never to return, is heightened on Tupelo Shuffle where producer Diplo and rapper Swae Lee perform sonic surgery on That’s Alright Mama.

Heresy or respectful reinvention? Again, Presley devotees will agree to differ. They may, however, be united in their love for Kacey Musgrave’s straight arrowed take on Can’t Help Falling In Love, which pairs her stripped down voice with a simple piano.

The same instinct for authenticity informs Måneskin’s If I Can Dream and Stevie Nicks’ Cotton Candy Land. Best of all is Jack White’s remix of Power Of My Love, which juxtaposes Elvis’s voice in gutbucket guitars and White’s distinctive snarl. It’s the most un-Luhrmann-esque thing here – a tribute that plays it straight without a suggestion of irony.