Tim Burton has been creating his eccentric, pop culture re-imagining of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (about a bemused little girl lost in a curious world), and has brought on several pop, punk and rock musicians to join in on the fantastical hookah-smoking fun as well. The track listing for the film's soundtrack was released on Myspace last week.
Blink 182's Mark Hoppus and Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy have collaborated on a song called "In Transit."Another meshing of musical minds — German rock band Tokio Hotel and Kerli, an Estonian alt rock singer best known for her song "Walking on Air" — create melodies and harmonies on another track, "Strange."
Avril Lavigne wrote an original called "Alice (Underground)," also the first song on the album and its forthcoming first single. Franz Ferdinand does a musical version of "The Lobster Quadrille," a verse from Carroll's original writings, and quirky, rap-meets-rock-meets-punk-meets-musical innovators 3OH!3 perform a song called "Follow Me Down."
Perhaps most notably is The Cure's Robert Smith, who will be performing "Very Good Advice," which, in the original Disney adaptation, has a distraught Alice singing, "Well, I went along my merry way / And I never stopped to reason / I should have known there'd be a price to pay / Some day, some day."
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2010.