Mötley Crüe have announced the release of the soundtrack to their upcoming biopic, The Dirt. The album will feature 14 of the band’s biggest hits, as well as four new tracks, one of which is a cover of Madonna’s “Like A Virgin.” The Dirt Soundtrack is set to hit shelves March 22, the same day the film premieres on Netflix.
Bassist Nikki Sixx commented:
“During the filming of our movie we got excited and inspired to write new music. Getting back in the studio with Bob Rock just fueled the creative fires for us. To me, the music sounds like classic Mötley. The lyrics were written for the movie and are a reflection of our life.”
According to an interview with Billboard, Sixx said the idea for the Madonna cover came to him while he was walking his dogs:
“[It] popped in my head, and I sort of like looked up, as if to laugh at God, and went, ‘You’re pretty funny.’” Though he and producer Bob Rock thought it was initially a “horrible idea,” Sixx ended up impressing him and Tommy Lee with a rough demo of the song and they decided to record it. “It was weird to hear Vince singing, ‘I’m like a virgin,’” said Sixx. In the end though, the band decided to channel Metallica as they recorded it, keeping only the lyrics true to the original. “There’s a part of the song that “does this little gahnk-guh-guh-guh-guh-guh-gahnk that Mick does, a bit of a nod to Metallica because [when] Metallica heard the ‘Dr. Feelgood’ album, [they] used Bob Rock to make the Black Album. It’s kind of a nod back to those guys because we were workin’ with Bob again.”
The band released the new single “The Dirt (Est. 1981).” The song was recorded specifically for the film and features a guest verse from Machine Gun Kelly, who plays Tommy Lee in the film. Sixx says the track was supposed to be a nod back to the band’s coming up in the 1980s. He tells Billboard:
“I think if we were to write a song about 2019, those lyrics wouldn’t be applicable because we’ve always written about what’s going on in our lives and what we’re observing. Now, we wouldn’t pull our punches and would have a more potent opinion on what’s happening socially or individually. In this case, we got to go back and explore what the band was like at the time, and lyrically, we didn’t really think, ‘Well, this is not popular right now. People don’t like this kind of stuff.’”
The Dirt is based on the Mötley Crüe’s 2001 autobiography The Dirt – Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band. With the film, the band tried to make the characters and the mood feel as real as possible. Says Sixx,
“Anybody can make a shitty rock movie. We don’t want to do that. A lot of people don’t understand rock music and the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. It’s not just sex, drugs and car crashes. Those things happen … and, in our case, more than usual. But what’s at the core of it all is the creativity and the personal relationships between each bandmember. We don’t just want to slap together the thrill moments. Any of the great movies, whether it’s ‘Walk The Line’ or ‘Ray’, they got the music right and the personalities right.”
