Friday Music Day

FMD — Movie Music

41 Comments

What's your favorite use of a popular song in a movie?  The Pixie's In My Head at the end of Fight Club comes to mind and of course Tiny Dancer from Almost Famous is another.  Martin Scorsese practically invented the genre in his first movie Mean Streets by using the Stones' Jumping Jack Flash to introduce the Robert DeNiro's character.

Any other good examples?  Drop your lists.

41 thoughts on “FMD — Movie Music”

  2. The success of the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack is a bit too obvious. I'm going to go one-up on this and list songs that spawned a movie:
    "Convoy"
    "Harper Valley PTA"
    "Singing in the Rain"
    and others

  4. This is my favorite from the movie Magnolia. Different characters sing the same some Aimee Mann song, thereby showing how all their separate stories are connected. Song starts about a minute into the video.

  5. Obviously Tarantino is known for his use of music, but both David Bowie's "Cat People" in Inglourious Basterds and "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" in Kill Bill stand out for me.

    Not a movie, but the use of TMBG's "Pencil Rain" in the pilot of Malcolm In The Middle did the trick for me.

  6. I started a serious iPod-clearing last night. I felt my toons were getting stale. What do I have left?
    1. Aaron Dilloway “Eight Cut Scars (for Robert Turman)”* Modern Jester
    2. Current 93 “Black Ships Ate the Sky (JG Thirlwell Remix I)” Black Ships Heat the Dancefloor
        a. Yellow-rumped Warbler ("Myrtle" subspecies)* “Song” (Cornell Essential Set)
    3. Zola Jesus “I Can't Stand” Stridulum
    4. Solid Doctor “Jet Smooth (remaster)” How About Some More Ether: Collected Works 93-95
    5. Solid Doctor “Oily Tooth” How About Some More Ether: Collected Works 93-95

    6. Björk “Oceania”* Medúlla
        b. Swamp Nightjar “Song/Calls” (A Sound Guide to Nightjars)*
    7. F--- Buttons “Surf Solar” Tarot Sport
    8. Aphex Twin “Milkman” Richard D. James Album
        b. Great Eared-Nightjar “Song/Calls” (A Sound Guide to Nightjars)*
    9. A Tribe Called Quest feat. Faith Evans “Stressed Out (Baby Phife Version — Full)” Stressed Out
    T. Katy B “Easy Please Me (Royal T Remix)” Easy Please Me

    *Notes:
    1. Well this is never leaving my iPod. It's my "Wake Up" playlist for alarms:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2j0bHVF8rc
        a. If you're in the northern half of the eastern United States, these are probably migrating through thickly right now. If you're in the southern half, they've probably already left.
    6. I miss Kelis's background vox (which are in the single version)
        b, c. Collected by Richard Ranft and Nigel Cleere as a companion to Cleere's book.

    1. I started a serious iPod-clearing last night.

      I've come to the conclusion I'm overdue for this as well. The amount of space on the phone might necessitate this sooner than later.

      1. I wanted some Pan_Sonic after Mika Vainia died, and not just my 12 favorite tracks.
        I realized the AJR has a definite goth-y outlook and so wanted to play her some Zola Jesus, and not just those three songs.
        I read Aaron Dilloway has a new album coming out and my fave two albums were not enough.
        I had a lot of music in my iPod that was functional for other people, but EAR listens to the Radio or CDs she's burnt more.
        The new arrival of Vibe 105 has given me more to listen to when I do drive.*

        *Naughty By Nature, the Pharcyde, 2Pac, Method Man/Redman, Outkast, etc. I don't know how long they can keep up with a format that caters so largely to me.
        I mentioned it on FB, but on "O.P.P.", they had to backmask-edit "Leanest" and "Cleanest" (which both rhyme with the last "P", for the ladies). But then I caught "Get Low" by Lil Jon and... well, there were unbackmasked words that are worse than Treach doing anatomical rhyming slang.

      2. I just have the mega-nano: 16GB is the full capacity. Without regular updates, it gets stale. Having not done any significant updates since fall, I copied the old list to a folder and deleted most of its contents.

        I don't really clean up iTunes except for accidental duplicates. Re-importing is more work than keeping the old titles around, unused.

  7. Well, the use of Bowie's "Heroes" in Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" made me chuckle the first half-dozen or so times I saw it. (EAR really liked it back then.)

    It was probably an obscure song, but I recognized Autechre's "Kalpol Introl" (first track of their first album, Incunabula) all over Darren Aronofsky*'s "Pi" and loved it. Dug the album out immediately after I got back to my dorm after seeing the movie.
    *I spelled his last name correctly before checking but got the first name wrong.

      1. I knew that song from the Come to Daddy EP, but I don't remember where it was used in the movie.

  8. I thought The Girl Next Door did a nice job in using music. Not a movie many people think of.

  9. Basically the entirety of American Graffiti is a masterpiece of weaving popular music into film. I really appreciate how the music creates place & character and the way they mixed it to flow between car stereos as the camera moves in & out of the cars. But what really impresses me is that, after paying huge royalties for the music, they weren't afraid to layer it below dialogue & sound effects as an undercurrent to the scene. This scene with Bobby Freeman's "Do You Want to Dance" is a good example, providing commentary on John & Carol's night together and the cat & mouse tango between Miller's '32 Ford & Falfa's '55 Chevy that reaches its peak at the very end of the film.

    And of course, the guy who's spinning the platters that matter.

    1. I just watched this a year ago. It reminded me of Dazed and Confused. (I know I have the order wrong.)

    2. A close second for me is The Blues Brothers, which is easily my favorite musical. There are too many great musical moments in the film, so it's hard to pick just one. But I'll go with this one, where the band plays together for the first time at Ray's Music Exchange.

  10. For tv shows, The Americans did a nice job with Tusk and Here Comes the Flood. The Wire used I Feel Alright by Steve Earle. I think it was on a season finale.

    1. The "Tusk" scene was fantastic. The other TV scene that popped into my head was "Crystal Blue Persuasion" in the last season of Breaking Bad.

      2. When I saw the "Crystal Blue Persuasion" scene, I wondered if someone had that in their head from the beginning, or if someone happened upon it by chance during production and thought, "well, obviously!" Either way, they definitely held on to it until the right moment.

  12.  

    2017/04/21 - FMD 

    01. “The Magnifying Glass” – The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar
    02. “Wonderboom” – Hundred Waters – Hundred Waters
    03. “Middle Of The Dark” – Lightspeed Champion – Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You!
    04. “Wilderness” – Middle Brother – Middle Brother
    05. “Devon” – Grimes – Halfaxa
    06. “Oh, Pretty Woman” – Al Green – I’m Still In Love With You
    07. “Nobody Really Cares If You Go To The Party” – Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit
    08. “All Die Young” – Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde
    09. “Preben Goes To Acapulco” – Todd Terje – It’s Album Time
    10. “Keep On Running” – Stevie Wonder – Music Of My Mind

     

  13. 1. Pilot Jones – Frank Ocean
    2. Good Life – OneRepublic
    3. Cardiac Arrest – Bad Suns
    4. Little Lion Man – Mumford & Sons
    5. Uprising – Muse

    6. Too young – Phoenix
    7. Prison Food – Ben Folds
    8. Sweet Life – Frank Ocean
    9. But Not For Me – Red Garland
    10. Superstar – Broods

    B1. Mykonos – Fleet Foxes

  14. Stuck in the Middle With You - That scene in Reservoir Dogs was incredibly disturbing and effective. The use of that song was perfect. Mr. Blonde was obviously a very psychotic character, and the song reflected the fact that cutting off an ear was just a casual task for him. When I hear that song on the radio, the scene plays back in my head.

    Sabotage in the first new Star Trek movie was awesome. Grant it, I am biased as I love the Beastie Boys and I loved that first Star Trek reboot. Not sure they really needed to use the song again in the third movie.

    I thought it was cute during the credits of School of Rock, when Jack Black was jamming with the kids to It's a Long Way to the Top by AC/DC. I know Jack Black can sometimes wear on you, but he was obviously just having fun with those kids and it cracked me up.

    BTW - I just saw this the other night for the first time. So funny!

    1. I think School of Rock was the perfect vehicle for a Jack Black lead. I enjoy his character in High Fidelity, but that's about it. He's married to one of the Hayden sisters (as in, Charlie Haden). Must make for interesting family get-togethers.

      I agree with your thoughts on "Stuck in the Middle with You." Tarantino's use of popular music in his films is pretty deft and consistently one of the things I enjoy most about his work.

      1. Tarantino's use of popular music in his films is pretty deft and consistently one of the things I enjoy most about his work.

        Ayup ... Reservoir Dogs was the first thing that came to mind in response to free's prompt.

    1. I actually have the same feeling whenever I happen to hear "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" anymore. The breakdown between the nice sounding stuff with everyone mostly just having fun and the drops where the party starts to boil over is a kind of nice dichotomy.

  18. Rectify used music pretty judiciously, but, man, did they use it well. Mazzy Star, Bon Iver, The Drones, and Sharon Van Etten were all used to great effect during the series run. Probably my favorite instance, though, was when the chaplain (Charlie) played Arvo Part to Daniel when he was stuck on death row. Waterworks.

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