For three minutes there are no drums, just keyboards and chamber strings a supportive beat comes in but fades out, as she begs, “Please don’t abandon me” and sounds genuinely bereft.The Fifty Shades of Grey franchise has always included intense, sexy songs to serve as the backdrop of its various promos, which heavily feature Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele in some very hot and heavy scenes. Sia, who can drill down to the emotional core of a cliché, sings “Deer in Headlights” as a submissive who finds herself falling “down a shame spiral” while seeking redemption. Wonder and hoots like Michael Jackson (and the Weeknd), leering, “Your body’s sweating, dripping wet and I just can’t control myself.”

Reyez soon succumbing to his charms: “How do you make dangerous look so beautiful?”įor some more overt machismo - on an album largely geared to a female perspective - there’s “The Wolf” by the Spencer Lee Band, with a riff vaguely hinting at Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and a vocal that yowls like Mr. Churchy organ chords alternating with indrawn breaths start a throwback soul song that has Black Atlass - one of this album’s stand-ins for the Weeknd - crooning, “Sometimes you have to break the rules,” with Ms. The somber, mock-ecclesiastical tone returns in “Sacrifice” by Black Atlass featuring Jessie Reyez.

(Don’t forget the international market.) She adds, “I’m addicted to anything that’s not good for me.” “I know you’re afraid of what you want but I’m curious,” Sabrina Claudio sings in “Cross Your Mind” over a reggaeton beat, in English and Spanish versions. Each song spells out the trilogy’s themes: desire, passion (with just a tinge of taboo), obsession, true love and, certainly not least, luxury shopping. But the “Fifty Shades” pop franchise - which on two previous albums has yielded Top 10 hits for the Weeknd (“Earned It”), the duo of Zayn and Taylor Swift (“I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”), and Ellie Goulding (“Love Me Like You Do,” which reappears, barely altered, on “Fifty Shades Freed”) - stays persistently on message. Some soundtrack albums are grab-bags of moods some are reserved and ambient.

The album has slightly spookier material. Yet the album’s upbeat love songs released in advance - “Capital Letters” by Hailee Steinfeld with BloodPop and “For You (Fifty Shades Freed)” by Liam Payne and Rita Ora - haven’t gained much chart traction perhaps they’re too wholesome. James, arrives with its goal clearly designated: getting a song on the radio with enough of a sultry frisson to sell tickets for the movie.

The soundtrack album to “Fifty Shades Freed,” the finale of the soft-core BDSM romance trilogy based on the novels by E.L.

Fifty shades of grey movie songs