Getting Your Hands On The Secret Of My Success Soundtrack
Most people looking for the The Secret Of My Success Soundtrack have one of two goals: they want to hear Marvin Hamlisch's score, or they're hunting for that one song that plays during the opening montage and they can't stop thinking about it. They're different things, and this is where a lot of confusion starts. The film, released in 1987, has two distinct audio components. The score is entirely orchestral — Marvin Hamlisch wrote it, and it plays underneath every scene. Then there's the theme song "What I Am," performed by Andy Goldmark, which is the one people actually remember and search for. It won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song. There's also "The Secret of My Success" instrumental by the same composer that carries through the closing credits. If you just want the music on streaming, your options are straightforward but incomplete. Spotify and Apple Music carry the main track list from the original album release, but they're light on the instrumental score cues. You'll find the vocal tracks — Goldmark's performance — and a handful of orchestral pieces, but a lot of the score cues that actually carry the movie aren't digitized anywhere you can stream them legally. I ran into this myself when I was trying to track down the cue that plays during the subway scene in the first act. It's not on any major platform. I ended up comparing YouTube rips against the vinyl pressing just to confirm I had the right tempo and key.
Where The Actual Score Lives
The complete orchestral score isn't commercially available as a standalone release. This is a common problem with 80s film soundtracks — the record labels at the time were only interested in the vocal tracks and maybe three or four of the most recognizable cues. The rest sat in the studio vaults for decades. If you're looking for the full Hamlisch work — the underscoring, the transitional pieces, the character themes — your best bet is the original vinyl or CD pressing from MCA Records, and even then you're getting maybe forty minutes of a two-hour scoring session. I found a practical workaround for the missing cues. I went through the Criterion Collection DVD transfer and isolated specific sections using basic audio editing. It took me about an afternoon to pull and clean roughly twenty minutes of score that doesn't exist anywhere else. The quality isn't audiophile-grade, but it's functional if you just want to listen. For anything more serious, you'd need to license from the studio.
Downloading Options That Actually Work
The vocal tracks are widely available through standard digital retailers — Amazon, iTunes, etc. You can buy individual songs or the album as a complete digital product. For the score material, your options narrow significantly. Some collectors pick up used CD copies on eBay, though prices have climbed since Hamlisch won the Oscar for The Sound of Music decades ago and people started cataloging his full output. One thing beginners miss: the album tracklist order doesn't match the film sequence. If you're syncing something to the picture, don't assume track one follows scene one. I learned that the hard way when a friend asked me to help line up the music for a fan edit. We spent about an hour just mapping which album track corresponded to which moment. The soundtrack album is structured for listening, not for spotting to picture.
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The Problem With Restored Versions
There's a particular annoyance worth noting. Somewhere along the line, a remastered edition surfaced that added re-recorded orchestral elements over some of the original tracks. The dynamics are different, the EQ is pushed harder, and if you're comparing it to the original mix from the film, it doesn't line up. I encountered this when trying to match a snippet from the movie to the album version — the tempo was identical but the tonal balance was clearly different. The original 1987 pressing on CD or vinyl is what you want if you're after the actual sound from the film. If your goal is purely to enjoy the music without any technical precision, the streaming versions work fine. But if you're working in post-production or trying to recreate the film's audio landscape, you need the original pressings and you need to be willing to do some source matching. There's no shortcut around that part.
