The Wicked Die Young is a music album that was released in 2017 as a companion piece to the movie The Neon Demon directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Winding Refn gave a number of interviews about the album, telling Elizabeth Aubrey âÂÂThe fourteen tracks on this compilation represent the various ideas I had while preparing The Neon Demon. Each song represents a specific emotionâ¦since I wanted my film to be both a horror film and a melodrama with camp, glitter and vulgarity, as well as a comedy and of course a little science fiction, all these various tracks made me able to step into a parallel world to tell the story.â In an interview with FACT in 2015, Refn explained why integrating music into moving image is so important for him. "Even when I shoot films I play music on set, in between takes", he said. "It helps you convey emotion better for actors - and brings people to a place of being that helps their performance."
The album contains exclusive tracks from Drive artists Electric Youth as well as the Neon Demon composer (and long-time score of other Nicolas Winding Refn films) Martinez, plus Refn's nephew, Julian Winding, who also had an electronic number on the soundtrack. The Wicked Die Young also has a number of works from Suicide, Giorgio Moroder, Pino Donaggio, Lynsey de Paul, Dionne Warwick and Sparks, among others.