The trouble with using popular songs in films for commercial reasons is that the song(s) featured may seem, at best, incongruous with the rest of the underscore, and, at worst, vulgar or crass, as is the case with Bryan Adams" "Everything I Do (I Do It For You"). The song is taken from the end credits of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves rather than from the underscore itself. The song's style has very little to do with the rest of the soundtrack, which is a traditional "classical" score.

The promo clip for the single owes a lot to the film - the video was shot in a forest, and is a performance video interspersed with shots from the accompanying film. The film-based shots include lots of close-ups of the main characters (including Kevin Costner and Christian Slater, obviously for sex appeal), numerous action sequences to show how exciting the film actually is to watch, the obligatory appearance of the villain (Allan Rickman as The Sheriff of Nottingham), and, of course, the reunion of the separated lovers at the end of the clip. The promo clip is therefore a microcosmic form of the film it is taken from, but without giving too much away. The video is obviously intended to make people want to see the film, and the song is included at the end of the film to make those very same people want to buy the single and/or the soundtrack album.

The authors of "On the Track" state that "in order to use a song effectively in a score there must be a space for that song on the soundtrack and a reason for its use" (p.525). The trouble with "Everything I Do..." is that there is no place for it or its AOR singer on the film, except for promotional purposes, and this is surely why the song has been appended to the end credits rather than used during the film itself. The same is true of Annie Lennox's "Love Song For a Vampire", which used as part of the end credits for Bram Stoker's Dracula, contrasting with its "classical" underscore, and whose video features Annie Lennox lip-synching the lyrics, interspersed with shots from the film.

It may be interesting to note that while Trainspotting made extensive use of its soundtrack, with the songs available commercially on a soundtrack album, no singles were released to help promote the film. A few of the tracks have appeared as B-sides on recent singles, including Pulp's "Mile End" (the B-side to their "Something Changed" single) and Sleeper's "Atomic" (as a B-side to their latest single "Sale Of the Century"), but unlike so many other films in the 1990s Trainspotting doesn"t seem to exploit its soundtrack as a promotional tool in the same way as Hollywood seems to favour.

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