1999 was an incredible year for the high school comedy. It was the year of Drop Dead Gorgeous, 10 Things I Hate About You, Drive Me Crazy, Cruel Intentions, Jawbreaker, Election, and the lesbian conversion-therapy satire But I’m a Cheerleader. Only, I didn’t immediately see But I’m a Cheerleader the year it was released, nor did I find a copy at my local video store in the years that followed. Jamie Babbit’s calling-card comedy was just as revered as its better-distributed contemporaries among my friends in the early aughts, but as someone who relied on the limited, sanitized selection of the Meraux branch of Blockbuster Video in those days, it just never made its way into my bedroom VCR. So, But I’m a Cheerleader fell under a distinctly 90s category of movies that I saw for the first time after listening to their CD soundtracks for years. See also: Clueless, Romeo+Juliet, and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; all bangers. I eventually fell in love with the candy-coated production design and post-John Waters queer irreverence of the film proper when I finally had access to it on DVD in the 2010s, but it already occupied a pastel-painted corner of my mind by then thanks to the familiar sounds of Dressy Bessy, Wanda Jackson, and soundtrack-MVP April March (whose anglicized cover of “Chick Habit” fully conveys the movie’s tone & aesthetic before you’ve made it through the opening credits).
Imagine my shock, then, to recently learn that But I’m a Cheerleader never had an official soundtrack release. To me, its pop music soundscape is just as iconic as any teen movies’ you could name – Fast Times, Breakfast Club, Dirty Dancing, whatever. And yet, there was apparently no legal way to access that soundtrack outside watching the movie start to end, straining to hear the songs past the spoken dialogue and VHS tape hiss. In retrospect, the copy of the soundtrack I owned in high school must have been a burned CD traded with a friend, which was some truly heroic mixtape work that I never fully appreciated until now. Come to think of it, I remember that CD having more April March tracks than the one that’s actually associated with the film, so I’m not even fully sure what was on it anymore. It was a one-of-a-kind bootleg put together by an obsessive fan who was frustrated that they couldn’t access an official release, passed around as an act of public service thanks to the modern miracle of the CD-R drive. It may not have been accurate to the track list of the songs as they were sequenced in the film, but it was accurate enough to the cheeky humor, swooning romance, and cult enthusiasm of But I’m a Cheerleader that it kept the movie fresh in my mind for as long as it took to find it. It’s yet another reminder “bootlegger” is just a dirty word for D.I.Y. archivist.
I didn’t know about this outrageous distribution oversight until a recent screening of But I’m a Cheerleader at a neighborhood bar, hosted by Future Shock Video. A kind of bootleg revival of the vintage video store experience, Future Shock has been screening VHS-era classics around the city in recent months, mostly to promote the opening of their new weekends-only storefront. This particular screening was a special one, though. As a Pride Month event and a fundraiser for the Covenant House homeless shelter, Future Shock not only projected But I’m a Cheerleader for a packed barroom, but they also dubbed a small batch of unofficial But I’m a Cheerleader soundtracks on audio cassette. By now, the movie itself has unquestionably been canonized among the Queer Cinema greats, but I was still delighted that the event was designed as a celebration of its all-timer of a soundtrack in particular. I was also shocked to learn that the practice of distributing that soundtrack has always been a mixtape-only endeavor, when it should have been in just as many record stores as the official tie-in soundtracks for Clueless or Can’t Hardly Wait. It turns out that passing around copies of the But I’m a Cheerleader soundtrack was just as much of a public service in the early 2000s as it is now in the mid-2020s. My Sharpie-labeled CD copy then was not as pretty as the cassette I picked up the other night, though, so I’m including pictures of Future Shock’s version below.
It’s not too late for an official release of the But I’m a Cheerleader soundtrack. If anything, the time is ripe. Not only is the film more widely seen and beloved than ever, but its exclusivity as a first-time release would also play directly into physical media obsessives’ debilitating FOMO. I just watched a bar full of young, queer movie nerds crowd around a humble tripod projector screen to watch this movie with their friends on a Wednesday night; there’s an audience for it. Until that historical wrong is corrected and the soundtrack receives its first official release, all you can really do is make your own mixtape version based on the track list compiled below. That can be a little tricky for the more independent artists on the soundtrack like Tattle Tale, who do not have the same far-reaching distribution as a Wanda Jackson or a RuPaul. Speaking from experience, though, you could probably just sub out a similar-sounding track from the Tattle Tale-adjacent act Bonfire Madigan and no one would really know the difference. Thankfully, Future Shock did not cut any corners in their own unofficial But I’m a Cheerleader soundtrack, but it would have been okay if they did. The off-brand, inaccurate version I had on CD in high school still did the trick.
- “Chick Habit (Laisse tomber les filles)” by April March
- “Just Like Henry” by Dressy Bessy
- “If You Should Try and Kiss Her” by Dressy Bessy
- “Trailer Song” by Sissy Bar
- “All or Nothing” by Miisa
- “We’re in the City” by Saint Etienne
- “The Swisher” by Summer’s Eve
- “Funnel of Love” by Wanda Jackson
- “Ray of Sunshine” by Go Sailor
- “Glass Vase Cello Case” by Tattle Tale
- “Party Train” by RuPaul
- “Evening in Paris” Lois Maffeo
- “Together Forever in Love” by Go Sailor
-Brandon Ledet
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