Garden State is the soundtrack album to the film Garden State. Compilation producer Zach Braff was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for Motion Pictures, Television or Other Visual Media for his work on the album.

Album information

The music that accompanied the film was hand-picked by Zach Braff. Commenting on the selections, Braff said that "Essentially, I made a mix CD with all of the music that I felt was scoring my life at the time I was writing the screenplay." The film’s budget limitations meant that obtaining all the songs Braff wanted for the film proved difficult, but Braff felt that the soundtrack was so integral to the script, he sent a copy of it with every request he sent out.

The music in the film features a number of indie-rock artists, notably The Shins. In an early scene, Sam passes Andrew a headset which is playing the song "New Slang" by The Shins as she says "You gotta hear this one song — it’ll change your life; I swear." A second Shins song, "Caring Is Creepy", is also featured on the soundtrack. The presence of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" on the soundtrack has been cited by some as evidence of a connection to The Graduate. Commenting on the soundtrack’s importance to the film, Sponic Zine wrote, "Braff did a masterful job of choosing songs that exemplified the emotional subtleties in the film… he put together a group of songs that complement each other perfectly and, when put together into one album, create something amazing, almost as if they never should have been apart."