Growing up, there was a forbidden VHS tape. Two, actually. The “Titanic” boxset taunted my sister and me from the shelves that housed the television and, underneath it, our parents’ movies. And on it went, until one day we convinced the babysitter that we were allowed to watch a PG-13 film in the very same house we moved out of before either of us reached our teens. Our mom came home before we finished the first tape and I didn’t actually see “Titanic” in its entirety until I was 23, but I could still identify the first notes of “My Heart Will Go On” without blinking.
This is intentional. From the days of silent film which featured a live accompanist, music and film have shared a perfect, symbiotic relationship. Now, an engaging soundtrack is instrumental in creating a successful movie. Wrong song, wrong tone, bad movie. But good songs — great songs, even — have the potential to create an atmosphere larger than the movie itself.
In the silent film era, these songs were largely frenetic Scott Joplin rags that scored the daring stunts of Buster Keaton — a far cry from today’s top 40 soundtracks. Still, even from its earliest moments, the technology that springboarded the film industry out of its quiet start centered music. The Vitaphone was primarily used to record orchestral music and short films until “The Jazz Singer” hit the box office in 1927.
This opened the doors for an enduring marriage.
“The Wizard of Oz,” born of the escapist media of The Great Depression, followed. But surely, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg could not have predicted the pop culture phenomenon that is “(Somewhere) Over The Rainbow” when they wrote it in 1939 for the movie musical. It has been re-recorded to acclaim by Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles (1966), Israel Kamakawiwo’ole (1993), Eva Cassidy (2001), and even Ariana Grande (2017).
Musicals, however, certainly have a leg up on sharing music. Perhaps the most well-known non-musical film of the Golden Era of Hollywood was made soon after in 1942 with “Casablanca.” Music is as integral to its plot as the sociopolitical context of the time in which it was made. It tells the story of a refugee safe haven in Morocco of otherwise occupied northern Africa. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) owns a bar in which he welcomes patrons with his friend and pianist, Sam (Dooley Wilson). One of those patrons is Rick’s ex-girlfriend.
“Play it, Sam,” she requests, and the first notes of “As Time Goes By” summon Rick from across the bar. Sixty years later, that moment was still in the cultural zeitgeist when two popular 2005 albums were released with tracks referencing the film — “Play It Again, Sam! You Don’t Have Any Feathers” by Manchester Orchestra and “Of All The Gin Joints In All The World” by Fall Out Boy.
It is the music of “Casablanca” that evokes emotion. However, it is not until Doris Day’s performance of the №2 Billboard hit “Que Sera, Sera” in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956, “The Man Who Knew Too Much” that we have a glimpse of what the future holds for music in film.
Similarly, 1967’s “The Graduate” brought with it the Simon & Garfunkel classic, “Mrs. Robinson,” a chart-topping №1 hit played by amateur guitarists the world ‘round. It is a song that wouldn’t exist without the film that inspired it. As time passed, this became more common: songs commissioned by filmmakers from popular artists that were not meant to score the film, but punctuate it. For example, the top 10 hit “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough” by Cyndi Lauper, written for the 1985 film that gave it its name. Lauper was also the musical director for the film’s soundtrack at director Steven Spielberg’s request and brought acts like The Bangles and REO Speedwagon to the project.
It became increasingly common with the rise of music supervisors in the 1980s to see popular musicians visibly attached to television or film projects — think Cher’s 1987 “Moonstruck” or the Scoobies’ (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) and Halliwell sisters’ (“Charmed”) weekly outings that dominated the late ’90s. Anyone from The Cranberries to Michelle Branch was liable to appear on screen. And it would, of course, be criminal to omit Vanilla Ice’s 1991 appearance in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze” to perform “Ninja Rap.”
In modern film, there is more leeway for music selection without the constraints of the conservative Golden Era of film, tied down by the Hays Code and McCarthyism. That freedom combines with a vast back catalog of music to open music supervisors to choices that range from the swinging notes of doo-wop to the flowing lyricism of ’90s hip-hop. Tonally and musically, the sky’s the limit.
An art in itself, the right choice can introduce old music to a new generation, like Chuck Berry in “Back to the Future” or The Marvelettes in “Captain Marvel.” Or, it can be a carefully curated composition by a single artist — think Eddie Vedder’s “Into the Wild” soundtrack. In its purest form, every soundtrack is a beautifully curated mixtape; a love note to the characters from the music supervisor. The most obvious example of this being Dave Jordan’s work on the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films which orbit around two mixtapes gifted to the main character by his mother.
For me, a great song is the mark of a great piece of filmmaking. One that will stay with you. Here are some moments that are worth your time:
- “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin in “Jarhead” (2005, dir. Sam Mendes / Music Supervisor: Randall Poster)
- “It’s Raining Men” by The Weather Girls as covered by DeathbyRomy in “Promising Young Woman” (2020, dir. Emerald Fennel / Music Supervisor: Susan Jacobs)
- Music Supervisor Dave Jordan holds the exclusive contract to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is responsible for the inclusion of “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin in “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017, dir. Taika Waititi), among others.
- “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver as performed by Mark Strong in “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” (2017, dir. Matthew Vaughn / Music Supervisor: Ian Neil)
- Last but certainly not least is “Someone Great” (2019, dir. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson / Music Supervisor: Stephanie Diaz-Matos) which tells the story of a music journalist and has more great music moments than one could possibly count.
If you’re anything like me, you probably recommend movies based on only these words: “The soundtrack was great.” You’ve probably left the theater, found the album on Spotify, and listened on repeat for days, even weeks. My latest was “Promising Young Woman.” Courtesy of Susan Jacobs, the DROELOE remix of “Boys” by Charli XCX was stuck in my head — which is not usually busy thinking about boys — for longer than I can count.
How about you?
