If like me you get a big kick out of the music NBC’s selected to spice up the kick-ass show Chuck, you’ve probably looked around for a soundtrack. The bad news: there isn’t one, and there isn’t likely to be one any time soon. The good news: NBC (and some dedicated fans) have sussed out most of the relevant tracks.

So I took it upon myself to make my own Chuck soundtrack via Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 downloads. I’m not the world’s finest mix-tape maker — in fact, I pretty much suck at it — but I felt inspired, so I spent a bit of time selecting the tracks I thought would make a good soundtrack and organizing them for an entertaining listen.

Here’s my Chuck Season One Soundtrack:

1. Cobrastyle Featuring Mad Cobra (Album Version) by The Teddybears (3:00)
2. The Missionary by Brothers Martin (2:03)
3. Sugar Assault Me Now by Pop Levi (3:02)
4. Don’t You Evah by Spoon (3:34)
5. Don’t Make Me a Target by Spoon (3:56)
6. Fall Into Place by Apartment (3:24)
7. A Comet Appears (Album) (Album) by The Shins (3:49)
8. Santa Maria (Del Buen Ayre) by Gotan Project (5:58)
9. Titoli (For A Fistful Of Dollars) by Ennio Morricone (3:03)
10. Toxic by Britney Spears (3:19)
11. Pimp Juice by Nelly (4:52)
12. It Takes Two by The Hit Crew (4:22)
13. Don’t Look Back In Anger by Oasis (4:48)
14. Dice (Album Version) by Finley Quaye & William Orbit (4:15)
15. Lust For Life by Iggy Pop (5:14)
16. Cellphone’s Dead by Beck (4:46)
17. Into Your Dream by Foreign Born (2:37)
18. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Album Version) by Jet (2:37)
19. Gone Daddy Gone/I Just Want To Make Love To You (Album Version) by Gnarls Barkley (2:28)
20. Short Skirt/Long Jacket (Album Version) by Cake (3:24)

Total: 74:31, $19.70

A few ID3-tagging tricks to complete the process: once you’ve purchased (or located in your own collection) all the tunes, you can replace the individual album art with your own (or mine above if you like it), replace the ablum name with “Chuck: Season One Soundtrack,” set the track numbers to the correct order above, and (the big trick if you want it to show up right in iTunes) set the “Album Artist, “Sort Album Artist,” and “Sort Artist” to wherever you keep soundtracks (I use “Various Artists”). This results in retaining the artist name for each tune, but showing the soundtrack together as an album — and iTunes plays the album in track order.

Also, you should know that the above links are encoded with GWC’s amazon associates code, so the tiny commission Amazon pays if you buy the tunes will go to help operate GWC. (Of course you’re welcome to grab the tunes without the links above, or buy them anywhere you like. We’ll totally live.)

Even if you’re not willing to pony up for the whole album, I’d absolutely recommend checking out some of the previews. I ended up getting into a couple of the bands on the list and snagged whole albums from ‘em. Great stuff, and yet another reason that Chuck (the show) rocks so hard.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 10:47 am and is filed under Just Really Cool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.