Review: For ‘Fifty Shades Darker,’ a soundtrack that actually lightens up

Fifty shades darker? Thank God that’s not the case.

Though it featured a couple of undeniable boudoir jams in the Weekend’s “Earned It” and Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do,” the hit soundtrack to 2015’s “Fifty Shades of Grey” was otherwise a bit of a slog, with too many dull, minor-key dirges in which it never occurred to anybody that one reason to have sex is because it’s fun.

Fortunately, the soundtrack’s follow-up, which arrives Friday just as the ominously titled film sequel enters theaters, shakes off most of that gloom.

“Fifty Shades Darker” opens with its biggest pop moment (and also its likeliest contender to follow the Oscar-nominated “Earned It” to the Academy Awards next year): “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever,” the breathy duet between Zayn and Taylor Swift that you’ve already heard a zillion times on the radio.

But they’re far from the only big names here. John Legend turns up with a pretty, brightly orchestrated ballad, “One Woman Man,” that sounds like it could’ve been composed by the pop-jazz careerist he plays in “La La Land.”

Halsey contributes “Not Afraid Anymore,” a throbbing, appealingly forthright number in which she tells us, “I am not ashamed anymore,” then tells a partner to watch her dress fall to the floor. Tove Lo, who co-wrote the previous album’s Goulding track, returns with the slick “Lies in the Dark,” which channels a similar sensuality.

Elsewhere, “Bom Bidi Bom” pairs two singers morally opposed to feeling sorry for themselves — Nick Jonas and Nicki Minaj — for a bump-and-grind throwaway that probably took longer to record than to write. And then there’s Kygo, the Norwegian tropical-house maestro who somehow landed on the soundtrack with the typically effervescent “Cruise.”

Inevitably, perhaps, “Fifty Shades” does get darker on a few occasions, as in Corinne Bailey Rae’s depressing rendition of Coldplay’s “The Scientist” — please, let’s not go back to the start — and “Helium,” a dreary Sia ballad that betrays its title with a leaden tempo.

But those duds are offset by The-Dream’s “Code Blue,” a gorgeously bummed-out confession in which the R&B auteur makes desperation sound kind of sexy.

“The closer I get to you, the more I feel like crying,” he moans over a soul-rock groove strongly reminiscent of “The Beautiful Ones” by Prince. “The farther I get from you, the more I feel like dying.”

Nothing gray about that.

mikael.wood@latimes.com

Twitter: @mikaelwood

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