Music from Wes Anderson Films

Wes Anderson's loveably left-field movies don't follow any rules, so why should his approach to putting together their soundtracks? "Only in an Anderson film" applies to almost everything the artful eccentric does, but making Brazilian troubadour Seu Jorge an actor in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and having him croon Portuguese versions of David Bowie tunes like "Life On Mars?" surely tops the list. Anderson never makes an obvious move — not only is smitten Rushmore student Jason Schwartzman's jealousy towards teacher Olivia Williams and her new beau Bill Murray perfectly backdropped by the bouncy-but-bereft "Here Comes My Baby," but we also get the original Cat Stevens recording instead of the Tremeloes' better-known version. And what could make a better match for the emotional injuries abounding in The Royal Tenenbaums than Nico's world-weary take on Jackson Browne's mournful masterpiece "These Days"?

Follow Anderson's every move, from mambo madness to folk fantasy, in Next Steps.

The complex cocktail of moods overflowing from Wes Anderson's movies — despair, irony, excitement — is echoed in the dizzyingly diverse musical mix that moves them along. Anderson's debut, Bottle Rocket, may take place in the Lone Star State the director calls home, but it moves to the hip-shaking beat of Cuban bandleader René Touzet's "Mambo Guajiro." Folk legend Burl Ives' gloriously goofy "Fooba Wooba John" finds a perfect home in the sympathetically surreal environs of Anderson's eccentric "children's" movie Fantastic Mr. Fox. And it takes an expert at outside-the-box thinking to score Rushmore's sabotage-riddled Jason Schwartzman/Bill Murray rivalry with the Who's daft, pre-Tommy rock operetta "A Quick One, While He's Away."

From folk rock to French pop, Anderson introduces your new favorites, in Deep Cuts.

Too often, soundtracks are lazy stacks of obvious choices you've heard in a million other movies. But by the time you're done watching a Wes Anderson film, you've made a mental list of little-known tunes that you need to permanently install into your life, pronto. The Life Aquatic track "The Way I Feel Inside" isn't a classic-rock radio staple like other Zombies tunes, but its goosebump-inducing ache will leave you just as happily haunted as the band's biggest hits. Cat Stevens' fragile folk ballad "The Wind" is one of the few tunes from Teaser and the Firecat that wasn't a single, but in Rushmore it's Anderson's nod to the Stevens songs his hero Hal Ashby used in Harold & Maude. And how else would French pop star Joe Dassin's "Les Champs-Élysées" have become inextricably lodged in your ears if the ever-unpredictable Anderson hadn't used it to close his India-themed The Darjeeling Limited?

The unlikely criminals of Bottle Rocket, the precocious teen Casanova of Rushmore — Wes Anderson's films are full of people learning about life by taking unexpected turns, and that same air of discovery fills his soundtracks, where you can find everything from British Invasion cult heroes the Creation to Icelandic ambient-rockers Sigur Rós. It's hard to think of another director since Scorsese who's made music such an integral part of his movies, and we've rounded up the tunes that play a key role in the action through them all. Get set for a wild ride through punk, folk, glam, baroque pop, and plenty more, as you finally get all the tunes that teased your ears in Anderson films like The Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr. Fox together in one place at last, right under your eager fingers.