Album review: ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ features Beyonce, Sia, Ellie Goulding and Jesse Ware singing of S&M and bondage

Fifty Shades of Grey/via YouTube Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan star in the movie version of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” whose soundtrack is a bit vanilla for our critic.

Strings flutter, synths ooze and women moan through the soundtrack to “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Would you expect anything else from the music to the most hyped sex movie of the millennium? Then again, the eros being served up in most of the tracks rarely has much of the S&M danger that fueled the book.
More lyrics speak of romanticized sex than the rougher kind. And the core of the music sounds like something you’d sooner hear at a spa than in an S&M dungeon.
The album, which features Beyonce, Ellie Goulding and Sia, stresses soft-edged production and slow build rhythms, bunched into some fairly catchy pop songs.
There’s some laziness at play here. Bey’s two tracks recycle older songs. They include a remix of “Haunted” and a total overhaul of “Crazy In Love,” which was the first single from “Fifty Shades” and has been out since the fall.

Simone Joyner/Getty Images Ellie Goulding’s contribution to the “Fifty Shades of Grey” soundtrack is solid.

Another pair of songs combs the back catalogues: the Stones’ 1978 track “Beast Of Burden” and Frank Sinatra’s recording of “Witchcraft” from 1957. Both sound as out of place here as a Puritan at a nudist colony.
For more rehash, the album works in a few covers. Annie Lennox re-purposed “I Put A Spell On You” from her own new album, and the electro trio AWOLNATION offers a soggy cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire.”
Mirroring the book’s core audience, female performers dominate the album. The most represented male — the R&B singer Weekend — has an androgynous voice, unaided by the tepid melodies on his two tracks.
The women don’t stick to a single point of view. They hint at both the S and the M roles. Lennox howls through that classic anthem of erotic possessiveness, though her take has far less threat than Nina Simone’s classic. Goulding, who has one of the album’s best songs with “Love Me Like You Do,” eagerly embraces the fun of bondage: “You’re the fear/I don’t care/I’ve never been so high.”

infusmi-11/13/INFphoto.com Beyonce recycles some hits for the “Fifty Shades” soundtrack.

Even so, she sings the lines in a voice as high and girlie as Betty Boop’s.
At least several other songs match the melodic appeal of Goulding’s track. Jesse Ware delivers her ballad “Meet In the Middle” with the airy allure of Dusty Springfield or Dionne Warwick. And the newcomer Vaults put a firm tune behind her high-gauze track.
Still, it’s left to Beyonce to deliver the edge. Only during the slowed-down “Crazy In Love” — with its enraptured vocal and deep-tissue beat — does this would-be S&M soundtrack draw blood.

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