High Heels (film) - Soundtrack

Soundtrack

The combined effects of voice, music and lyrics is one of the most prominent features of Almodóvar as a filmmaker. The director finds his most significant musical economy in the highly expressive boleros, which are at the forefront in this film. Almodóvar explained that he listened to an enormous number of songs to find those he used in the film. He finally chose Piensa en Mi and Un año De Amor. His idea was to find songs that would correspond to a singer such as Becky del Paramo both at the start and at the end of her career. Piensa en Mi is a very famous song in Mexico. It was composed by Agustín Lara and sang by Lola Beltrán. The director eventually chose a version by Chavela Vargas, sung as a lament. Un Año de amor, which Letal sings in playback during his show, is a French song by Nino Ferrer. There is a famous Italian version sung by Mina. Almodóvar rewrote the lyrics in Spanish.

Once the two songs were chosen Almodóvar had to find a voice that suited Becky del Páramo. After trying several voices, he found Luz Casal's fitted Marisa Paredes appearance. Luz Casal, famous in Spain as a rock singer, accepted and the two songs became her biggest hits.

High Heels also contains an unexpected prison yard dance sequence that makes reference to the famous musicals shot in fake prisons like Jailhouse Rock with Elvis Presley and John Waters’ Cry-Baby. The song used in that scene is a merengue: Pecadora by Los Hermanos Rosario.

The score, which Almodóvar did not like, was composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto. For the title sequence and Rebeca's second confession in High Heels, Almodóvar used pieces composed by Miles Davis in the Sixties, that were inspired by Flamenco. The first piece, heard while Rebeca is alone waiting for her mother, is called Solea, meaning solitude in Andalusian. After her second confession to judge Dominguez, when Rebeca goes to the cemetery to throw a handful of earth on her husband's coffin, we hear the second piece, Saeta, by Gil Evans, from his Sketches of Spain.

Almodóvar also used two themes composed by George Fenton for Dangerous Liaisons. They are heard when Rebeca leaves prison and goes home and when she returns to prison in the van.