The Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakeul soundtrack. The best movie music carries you off on journeys to other worlds, slotting you into fresh personas you never would have designed for yourself but which – when those first few notes slide out from the speakers – suddenly seem every bit as bitingly real as a cold gust of wind on the Monday morning walk to work. Think of Bernard Herrmann’s Taxi Driver theme; that weary yet still-hopeful late night sax cruising down the rawest, most dangerous city streets, picking out what faded echoes of romance can be found amongst the dirty and the damaged. Or Jerry Goldsmith’s gorgeous Chinatown score, where nostalgia for purer times that never really were is wedded to a portrait of film noir L. A.’s decaying underbelly. And what about John Williams’ contribution to the Indiana Jones saga? So stirring it could instantly effect a revival of Walt Disney’s frozen, detached noggin; when that baby starts blaring out, you immediately know that there’s an adventure in the offing and you sure as succotash better saddle up quick if you don’t want to miss out on all the fun. Oh sure, you’re going to have to travel under scorching sun, through arid desert to reach the most faraway of lands. There’s a fair chance you’ll come within a few millimetres of being eaten by cannibal pygmies. And there is no question of you avoiding an apocalyptic case of the squits. But the way Williams tells it, it all sounds such rollickingly King Solomon’s Mines-tastic good fun that you would have to be stark-staring crackers not to be first chap out of the door.

So bearing all that mind, where precisely does the soundtrack to Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakeul transport the listener to? Well, it made me feel like I had been suited up in some natty orange threads and shipped out on a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay. That I was holed up in some cramped cell, too narrow to sit down, too low to stand up, and all around me, ringing out, was an incessant chorus of high-pitched chirruping. Squeaking helium-treated mainstream pop hit after helium-treated mainstream pop hit. Breaking me as surely as a steamroller breaks a china teapot. So insidious were those accursed chipmunks, so painfully deep did each chirpy melody pierce into my neural cortex that I began to dream of someone breaking down the door to my prison and demanding a confession from me. Some militaristic grunt grabbing me by the collar and angrily exhorting me to tell all. Offering me at least some form of deliverance from a cheeped version of the – even under normal circumstances, perilously infectious – Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) that was going over and over inside of my skull. But no-one came to my little room of the mind. No-one! I was abandoned, utterly defenceless against those yelping menaces, as their maddening music continued to dance round and round and round, like a rabid dog with a grip of its own tail.

Alvin, his Chipmunks, and their female counterparts the Chipettes have delivered a brain-subverting album to make the beating of the eponymous organ in Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart seem but a faint rattle in comparison. Listen to any one of these cuts just once and they are instantly imprinted on your brain, just as surely as if someone sliced your head open and pressed a red-hot branding iron against your grey matter. Even as I’m sat here typing this, fingers thwacking on the keyboard, I Walk on Guilded Splinters playing away in the background, the only thing I can truly hear is a troika of little chipmunks trilling their take on Foreigner’s soft rock horror I Want to Know What Love Is. That’s all that’s been in my bouncing through my cerebellum for days now, ever since I first wrapped my lugholes around it, and I’m terrified it’s never going to go away again. Every morning I wake up and for a half-second wonder if this is the day I am to be released from my torment. But then the squeak kicks right back in, and I know I’m once again saddled with those furry homunculi for the whole rest of the day. Anyone asks me a question, and it takes a full twenty seconds for them to get an answer, as their incoming words have to first negotiate a route past those pesky chipmunks.

And they expect us to let our kids listen to these ditties! People, if we’re not careful we could lose an entire generation here; this record functioning as a particularly upbeat Pied Piper of Hamlin, enacting a musical mesmerisation of the world’s youngsters. Because there is no resistance against Alvin and his Chipmunk acolytes – these squeakers reign supreme. And we helpless, puny mortals can only cower in the face of their awful power.

You can download the Alvin And The Chipmunks 2 soundtrack as mp3s here
Or buy it on CD here

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakeul Soundtrack (Songs) – Track-Listing
1. You Really Got Me – The Chipmunks feat. Honor Society
2. Hot N Cold – The Chipettes
3. So What – The Chipettes
4. You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) – The Chipmunks
5. Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) – The Chipettes
6. Bring It On – The Chipmunks
7. Stayin’ Alive – The Chipmunks
8. The Song – The Chipettes feat. Queensberry
9. It’s Okay – The Chipmunks
10. Shake Your Groove Thing – The Chipmunks and the Chipettes
11. Put Your Records On – The Chipettes
12. I Want to Know What Love Is – The Chipmunks
13. We Are Family – The Chipmunks and the Chipettes
14. No One – The Chipettes feat. Charice
15. I Gotta Feeling – The Chipmunks and the Chipettes
16. In The Family – The Chipmunks and the Chipettes

Leave your thoughts on Alvin And The Chipmunks 2 and the Squeakquel soundtrack in the comments. If you’re looking for a particular song leave a description and someone normally replies.