Not too long ago, I did a JoBlo Originals video on the 1994 Jeff Bridges/Tommy Lee Jones action flick Blown Away. In it, I mentioned that the movie had just been re-released by Kino Lorber on 4K UHD---a cause for celebration. Or so I thought. While the movie is largely intact, two minor soundtrack substitutions have apparently been made, which you can read about here.
The movie relies heavily on the music of U2, and luckily those songs are intact. However, two other soundtrack cuts---Here's Where the Story Ends by The Sundays and All Night Long by Aretha Franklin---have been replaced. In the case of Here's Where the Story Ends, the replacement is a cover version you might not notice right away. The Aretha song, however, has been swapped out for some generic jazz, and they even removed Aretha's name from a piece of dialogue spoken by Forest Whitaker's character.
Clearly, this comes down to licensing costs, but it's not the only example. The Carl Reiner comedy Fatal Instinct, a spoof of Basic Instinct, has had two songs removed: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly and Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison, which plays twice in the original. This is also the case for all streaming versions of the film, although---curiously---the Blown Away streaming version still has its soundtrack intact.
I wouldn't blame Kino Lorber for the changes. No doubt these substitutions were made by Amazon/MGM, the rights holders. But where does it stop? Apparently, a few years ago, the streaming version of When Harry Met Sally was missing many of its original songs, although (thankfully) that seems to have been fixed. For a while, the streaming version of The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear was also missing an important song by The Righteous Brothers, but it's now intact.
This has been a long-standing issue with TV re-releases (many versions of Dawson's Creek are missing its iconic theme song), but I didn't realize it was creeping into movies, too. Back in the '80s, this was commonplace, with Universal infamous for changing music on their home video releases---Sixteen Candles, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and most notoriously The Wild Life. Thankfully, since the DVD era, these movies have had their original soundtracks restored (although music licensing kept The Wild Life out of print for years). But this new trend feels like a slippery slope.
Even worse, consumers aren't being warned that the movies have been altered. So---I hate to say it---be wary whenever a new catalogue title shows up on Blu-ray.