Scott Pilgrim is making lots of noise for having a great soundtrack with lots of cool stuff on it. Wes Anderson also uses plenty of popular (or super-cool) music to color his films.

While I often love this, I remember a creative non-fiction teacher scolding me for using some Tones On Tail lyrics in a story I was working on, saying, "don't use someone else's work to make your own point." (After all, I was learning to write, not quote.)

So, song heavy soundtracks - a way to make your film more expressive and modern, or an easy way to make your movie seem cool while taking some of the pressure off of your own storytelling skills?

(For the record, I lost my faith in Anderson when it seemed to me more and more like he was overusing already recorded pop songs to make his movies work.)

Some directors can use it to perfection, and it really depends on the film. Paul Thomas Anderson did this with Boogie Nights and I couldn't imagine a better result.

Good answer.


I much prefer original soundtracks though.

I'll agree with Boogie Nights, for sure. Since that's a period piece, it kind of fits a different category, though. Seems like it's more common for such movies to use period songs to evoke the time period, more than to just move the story along or hammer home a feeling.

I'll never listen to Sister Christian the same way again ...

One major drawback is that it can seriously date a movie. If you are making a period piece, using period songs can be very effective. One movie that I immediately think of is Donnie Darko ... it could have easily been a "timeless" film, but the creators chose to firmly place it in the 1980s and used period music to cement that.

Yeah, the Daredevil soundtrack is pretty bad (and im one of the few legit fans of that movie), but come on, a fucking power ballad

Not to go too far afield, but the Aerosmith song from Armageddon pretty much ruins everything ...

I agree with this.
Some others that I thought were also good:

Goodfellas
Repo Man
Dead Presidents
Cruising
Suburbia (Spheeris)

Well it did have talk about the 88 election and there was other bits of dialogue that dated the movie.

The movie was doing a good enough job of that on it's own.

I don't have any issue with using songs, just like orchestral music they can either enhance or distract from a scene. The picture or director doesn't suddenly lose my respect if everything in it isn't original.

It depends on the film and the use of the music. The Scott Pilgrim comics use tons of songs references anyway, so it wouldn't have made sense to have no known songs on the soundtrack.

I think movies are a different situation than prose writing, because it's a combination of multiple art forms to create something new. If a movie uses a song really well, it should change the audience's perception of the song and the movie. If you want to use Wes Anderson as an example, his use of "Strangers" by The Kinks in The Darjeeling Limited is the best moment in the movie and subsequently has changed the way I listen to that song.

Then there are other movies where the song is a distraction or detracts from what's on screen. It all depends on how these things are used.

I'm totally on board with good use of popular songs, too. Goodfellas definitely made me love 'Layla' in a way I hadn't before. I prefer it to be sparing, though.

Not to harp on Wes Anderson too much, (or am I trolling? cackle cackle) but I lost it with Life Aquatic, sometimes his movies are so much about the music that you're not thinking, "damn, Wes Anderson is a great director," but, "damn, look how nicely this song fits the scene, Anderson has great taste in music."

Absolutely movies are way more synergistic than prose, with different rules, but a soundtrack is a large percentage of the success of a movie, (10%? 20%?) when have you crossed the line into being a good DJ?

Er, does it matter?

/thread

For my money, the best use of songs in a film is still American Graffiti. The radio broadcast anchors the entire night, and gives the film not only its structure (providing segues between concurrent scenes), but really helps craft the sense of the story happening in some kind of condensed real time. Brilliant, and since it was meant to take place more than a decade before it was filmed, being dated isn't an issue.

I think the licensing costs for getting previously recorded music is prohibitive enough that it's not too often a movie will include songs out of laziness on the part of the director. As for the artistic merits of including someone's work to accentuate a film, it seems to me that's a non-issue. Each actor makes specific choices with how to say lines written--and re-written--by someone else. How the scene is blocked, lit, shot; all of that is determined by the cinematographer and director. What's filmed is edited by someone else entirely. My point is, a film is far more than a single individual's work. I don't see how the inclusion of a song originally created and recorded outside of the context of the film makes the film itself somehow less original.

no mention of DAZED AND CONFUSED...movie wouldn't be the same without that soundtrack

Yeah, but now bands sign up with licensing companies that basically say to studios "You need a song for an action/romance/sad/scary/funny scene? Well here it is" providing songs by unknown bands that want exposure on the cheap.

I can think of 1 movie that has the single most annoying damn song played over and over and over until I absolutely hated it.
Jennifer's Body. Through The Trees. I never wanna hear that song again and it actually detracts from me enjoying the movie more

Since you asked, I can't stand the non-diegetic use of pre-existing pop music in a movie. I understand the desire some directors seem to have to make movies accompanied by mixtapes instead of real scores, but I can think of many more movie scenes that were ruined than were made more effective by the practice. At the end of The Matador this moment: made me want to vomit. I admit occasionally a scene and a song will work so well together that I can dig it in spite of myself. I never thought a Foreigner song could get to me until the first kiss scene in Fucking Åmål. But that was probably diegetic - coming from the taxi radio? - so maybe it's one of those exceptions that proves the rule.

Really? You had to look it up? You make me sad.

Some directors use the soundtrack to complement the film, others use music to suffocate it. As long as it fits the picture, I'm ok with it.

My favorite use of pop music in a film's soundtrack is Grosse Point Blank. I do think I prefer scores generally.

In my opinion, Garden State is an example where the director, Braff in this example, used the music to compliment the film.

That's a bingo...this and Almost Famous wouldn't be anywhere near the masterpieces they are without their respective soundtracks. Although, I'd have to argue that Goodfellas makes the best use of music out of all the films I've seen.

I really hated the way Watchmen used the classic rock tracks.

And for a movie set in the 90's, I recently rewatched Empire Records and that movie is also nothing without the soundtrack.

I'd disagree, but Chris Milam already said it better than I can in his great article, Bored New World: How the Zach Braff Prototype Is Slowly Killing American Music:

Thanks Luther for introducing the proper term for my question. I remember having a brain once, but I've destroyed it with beer.

As for Zach Braff, the Garden State soundtrack destroyed any chance I had of ever liking The Shins.

It does seem like for a lot of modern movies soundtracking has become a licensing game. Sometimes I'd prefer library tracks over a modern pop track.