1) It Doesn't Matter (Theme of Sonic); 2) Escape from the City (for City Escape); 3) Believe in Myself (Theme of Tails); 4) Unknown from M.E. (Theme of Knuckles); 5) Fly in the Freedom (Theme of Rouge); 6) Throw It All Away (Theme of Shadow); 7) E.G.G.M.A.N. (Theme of Eggman); 8) Live & Learn (Main Theme of Sonic Adventure 2); 9-16); Instrumental versions
The vocal themes from the game where the series grew a beard and got more serious. Still cheesy and lovably so, but with a serious focus to the craft.
Key tracks: "Believe in Myself", "Unknown from M.E.", "Live & Learn"
Sonic Adventure 2 was released on Sonic's 10th birthday and as the anniversary game it aimed to deliver everything in a bolder, more epic way than ever before in the series: including the series' first steps into more serious themes in contrast to the usual Saturday morning cartoon plots. SA2 does a better job of balancing that inherent mismatch than many of the little more misjudged attempts since, and that same balancing act applies to the vocal theme songs that had become a new feature for the series with the first Sonic Adventure game. There is no escape from the inherent cheese in Sonic vocal themes (which is partly the reason why they can be so lovable), and the songs on the Sonic Adventure 2 themes on Cuts Unleashed aren't attempting to fight against it either. Even if these are rock songs about neon-coloured animal characters, they can still try to take themselves seriously within their own world; the source material doesn't have to mean you can't try to say something about the characters.
The three hero side songs (the game splits its length between the good guys and the anti-villains) demonstrate this refined approach pretty well. The songs for Sonic, Tails and Knuckles are all remakes of their themes from the first Sonic Adventure, and where the first game openly and blissfully waded into the cartoon cheese, the versions here buckle up and try to take themselves a little more thematically seriously. "It Doesn't Matter" now has a pop punk pace to it, replacing the original wind-in-hair highway rock and its carefree attitude suits Sonic's character far better. "Believe in Myself" is now an A-grade pop/rock anthem with a fire in its belly, featuring some lush arrangement details that wonderfully underline the song's upbeat ideas. I'm not afraid to admit I have an irrational adoration towards the song, but it's a fantastic representation of the mix of cartoon wholesomeness and genuinely quite excellent hooks that Sonic themes often aim for. It's "Unknown from M.E." that truly takes a leap as a reimagination though. For some reason Sonic Team decided on Sonic Adventure that Knuckles' chosen musical style is hip-hop and his theme in Sonic Adventure has the slight clunkiness of people with no hip-hop past trying to fit that genre into Sonic the Hedgehog; for SA2 the team went all-in and honed down on their approach, smoothed all the rough edges off, and realised how to pull it off the best. The SA2 version of "Unknown from M.E." features slicker rap sections, smooth RnB-flavoured choruses, a fantastic vocal interplay between the leads for the respective sections and a constantly shifting and evolving production that gets increasingly more exciting. Replace the lyrics with something less geeky and all three songs could stand up on their own two feet - a case in point that just because you're doing game themes, it doesn't mean you can't take the craft seriously.
The three dark side songs are all brand new compositions and highlight the expanded genre palette of SA2, where each character was paired up with a distinctive sound for all their levels, and where the themes are a logical follow-up of that. "Fly in the Freedom" is a smoothly floating, jazz-flirting pop tune which is once again an arranger's playground, from its suave guitars to the underlining backing vocals; out of all the songs here, it's the song that's least like what you might stereotypically imagine as game music and it's kinda impressive in its own way. Over on the complete other side, "E.G.G.M.A.N." is a hammy cartoon bad guy anthem and relishing in it: it's by far the most outrageous song of the lot but it's captivating much like a great villain song should, and it's laden with the kind of hooks that keep your foot tapping for days. "Throw It All Away" is the weakest of the lot: its moody techno goes a bit over the top in its attempt to sound dark and edgy, but ultimately its main crime is that it's twice longer than it should be, its couple of good building blocks repeated ad infinitum without much change and in comparison to all the other themes, comes off very one-note. A lot of Shadow's gameplay segments feature songs in a similar style and with vocals to boot, but they all do the same thing better than his actual main theme does.
In addition to the six character songs, the mini-album also features the game's main theme and one of the stage songs. "Live & Learn" has become more or less the definitive vocal theme song of the series and the equivalent of a signature song for Sonic Team's house band Crush 40, and it's really obvious why. It's a fist-pumping anthem loaded with energy, packed with a powerful signature riff, featured Johnny Gioeli's best vocal performance in the Sonic history, and just when you think it's reached its peak, the song shoots out one level higher for the last chorus in a brilliant example of a key note change done right. No Sonic main theme has ever come close to "Live & Learn" and it may as well be the series' main theme for what it's worth. The inclusion of "Escape From the City", the song from Sonic's first stage, is a little random but practically an act of precognition: time has turned the stage into an iconic Sonic moment and simultaneously turned the song itself into one of the series' all-time classics, and so its inclusion feels almost justified here as if Sonic Team anticipated it would become one of the game's big songs. And it is a great song, of course - super-addictive feel-good pop punk with one of the franchise's best choruses. By the end of the album you also have instrumental versions of each song, which aren't really a positive or a negative thing: they help to hear the production details but like most instrumental versions, mainly get shelved after one listen.
I'll share an anecdote. I used to be a fairly massive Sonic fan, but there was a point in time where I had ended up losing touch with the series. Where at one point I had been listening to random Sonic soundtracks on a nearly daily basis, I had also started to become more obsessed with music general and finding myself in love with new bands and artists at an exponential rate, and thus listening to this music and playing these games had fallen off my radar nearly completely. One day, the SA2 version of "Believe in Myself" came up on a music player shuffle and on that very instant, as the song played, every single memory I had of playing the series and listening to the music in my more formative years flooded back into my mind. When I got home, I pulled the game back out of the shelf and started it for the first time in ages and went on to relive through it again - a moment that essentially solidified my love for the series once again (even if I'm hardly the same fanatic today as I was back in the days). Everything on this album is very close to my heart, as ridiculous as these songs can be. You most likely don't feel the same in the slightest should you listen to any of these songs without any connection to the games - you might wonder what exactly I'm rambling about in the paragraphs above. As such, I'm not going to say that you should listen to these songs even if you know nothing about the context; I mean you might get a kick out of them but I'm not going to bet on that. Instead, I'm going to finish this by simply saying that to it me it doesn't matter these are from a game about a blue hedgehog and his friends: there's a meaning here that's long since become something bigger than the source material.
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