Desperate Housewives

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Desperate Housewives

No.	Artist	Title	Length
01.	Brenda Strong	Mary Alice	0:48
02.	SHeDAISY	God Bless the American Housewife	3:43
03.	Nicollette Sheridan	Edie	0:04
04.	Shania Twain	Shoes	3:55
05.	Anna Nalick	Band of Gold	3:11
06.	Felicity Huffman	Lynette	0:13
07.	Liz Phair	Mother’s Little Helper	3:02
08.	Indigo Girls	Mrs. Robinson	3:46
09.	Martina McBride	Harper Valley PTA	3:26
10.	Marcia Cross	Bree	0:06
11.	LeAnn Rimes	We’re Running Out Of Time	4:07
12.	Joss Stone	Treat Me Right (I’m Yours For Life)	4:01
13.	Sara Evans	One’s On The Way	3:22
14.	Eva Longoria	Gabrielle	0:04
15.	Macy Gray	Boom Boom	2:40
16.	Gloria Estefan	Young Hearts Run Free	3:45
17.	Teri Hatcher	Susan	0:06
18.	Idina Menzel	Damsel in Distress	3:08
19.	k.d. lang	Dream Of The Everyday Housewife	3:53
20.	Brenda Strong	Mary Alice	0:12
21.	Danny Elfman	Desperate Housewives Theme	0:39
hidden	Marc Cherry	Wisteria Lane	1:24

Trivia

The Canadian version of this soundtrack featured a bonus track of SHeDAISY performing “God Bless the Canadian Housewife,” —a song written by Jann Arden and Russell Broom which is virtually similar to track #2.

Reception

Fans of the TV show Desperate Housewives are a mighty devoted bunch: thankfully, the wickedly clever dialogue and sassy badness of the characters is succinctly captured on the show’s first compilation disc. This CD’s lineup alone elicits an immediate “wow” response: Shania Twain, Joss Stone, LeAnn Rimes, Macy Gray, Indigo Girls, k.d. lang, and more have each packed the collection with previously-unreleased music. With half of the disc recently-written songs and half covers of old classics, the originals ultimately prove to be the highlight. Shania Twain’s “Shoes” is a future line-dancin’ classic, analogizing men to shoes (“a girl can’t never have too many of ’em”). Joss Stone’s “Treat Me Right” is nothing short of sexy, soul perfection, while SheDaisy’s performance of the Jann Arden -penned “God Bless the American Housewife” kicks things off in a dark country style. The “who’s that girl with the voice?” award goes to Idina Menzel (Rent, Wicked) for her powerhouse performance of “Damsel In Distress.”

The covers on this CD are ultimately more clever than killer, but Liz Phair’s take on the Rolling Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper,” the Indigo Girls’ “Mrs. Robinson,” and Martina McBride’s “Harper Valley PTA” match the mood of the series perfectly. For no extra charge, there’s some classic Desperate sound clips on the disc: quick audio bites taken from the show, providing glimpses of its compelling, acerbic tone. –Denise Sheppard, Amazon.com

Apart from Danny Elfman’s score, music doesn’t play a big part on Marc Cherry’s runaway television hit Desperate Housewives, but any show that’s this popular gets a soundtrack anyway — hence, the fall 2005 release of Music from and Inspired by Desperate Housewives, just in time for the DVD release of the first season and the debut of the second. Since there’s not much music in the show, that means that the 13 songs here are all “inspired” by the series — which, in turn, means that they’re all songs about marriage or girl power, all performed by female artists. Instead of relying on previously released material, the producers have commissioned new recordings, which helps give this a fresh feel even if there are no less than six covers of well-known oldies about marriage and motherhood. At first, the artist lineup looks rather diverse, since it contains everything from Shania Twain and Martina McBride to Liz Phair, Joss Stone, Gloria Estefan, Indigo Girls, and Macy Gray, but it doesn’t take long to realize that everything here is firmly within the confines of adult pop, fitting both adult contemporary and adult alternative formats quite nicely. This is classy and clever, well-produced music that is not without a few missteps (chief among them Liz Phair’s flat-footed “Mother’s Little Helper” and Macy Gray’s jazzy “Boom Boom”), but is heavier on the highlights: Anna Nalick belts out “Band of Gold,” Shania Twain’s “Shoes” is sublimely silly, Joss Stone’s “Treat Me Right (I’m Yours for Life)” has a nicely mellow groove, and Sara Evans’ treatment of “One’s on the Way” may be faithful but it’s still a lot of fun. These are of such a similar mind set that the snippets of dialogue from the show are not only not needed to tie this together, but they get to be a little irritating (and Mary Alice’s voice-over narration has never sounded so smug and cloying as it does here, separated from the visuals). All the same, Desperate Housewives is a surprisingly entertaining soundtrack, especially for a show that doesn’t really feature pop music in the first place.

— Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AllMusic

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Lyrics

Mother’s Little Helper

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