#6: Once Again My Year In Music Was Kind of Just A Year In Movies
I'll listen to your song if you put it in a movie trailer.
On account of having a debilitating individuality complex, which greatly surpasses my desire to avoid being a “not like the other girls” girl, I take a certain pride in having consistently ridiculous Spotify Wrappeds.
Here are some of my top songs from the last decade: Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” off the Fantasia soundtrack, two Thai 80s pop bops I couldn’t tell you the name of because the titles are in Thai from the extremely good 2003 coming-of-age romance Fan Chan (My Girl), “Slip Away” from … Booksmart1, Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro” in 2020 when I was really going through something in regards to James Ivory’s A Room With A View.
The obvious through line here is that a vast majority of what I listen to can be traced back to a movie. In 2019, my 2nd most listened to song was Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” on account of the trailer for the Julianne Moore movie Gloria Bell, which I didn’t even see. Last year, I couldn’t get enough of “Waters of March” on account of The Worst Person in the World. I only know about Arcade Fire in the first place from the Spike Jonze Where the Wild Things Are trailer.
Naturally this year was no different so here is my year in music, presented by the movies.
First off, these were my top artists:
John Williams
Ludwig Göransson
The Beatles
Olivia Rodrigo
Danny Elfman (most listened to in October… bit on the nose)
Lol. Anyway, moving on…
Shoop by Salt-N-Pepa/Rye Lane (#25)
Have you seen Rye Lane? Rye Lane is the exceptionally charming and funny rom-com/directorial debut from Raine Allen-Miller. Dom and Yas meet at an art exhibition when Yas catches Dom weeping in the gender-neutral bathroom and decides to take a little pity on him—she approaches him back in the gallery and they spend the day together in South London, chatting about their recent break-ups, eating, and getting into some mild hijinks. It’s a classic walk-and-talk-around-a-city movie where the city feels like a very real place and the central couple have actual chemistry. What’s better than this! Anyway, there’s a scene where Yas poses as Dom’s girlfriend early on so he can save face in front of his ex and she concocts a story about how they met at karaoke singing “Shoop” together which reminded me that “Shoop” is a great song.
Quantum Mechanics by Ludwig Göransson/Oppenheimer (#20)
What a goddamn magnificent score. This one makes me want to walk slowly around a park right after it rains. This track is basically the same as “Can You Hear The Music?” only less frantic, more thoughtful and plodding. Both great!
How You Satisfy Me by Spectrum/Priscilla (#19)
This song was in the trailer for Priscilla and it’s awesome. I sort of wish it wasn’t also in the movie because I think needle drops should be a surprise but it’s a good enough song that I don’t care. Say what you will about Sofia Coppola, but she has great taste in music. For example, marrying the guy from Phoenix is so real. I love “Lisztomania.”
Then He Kissed Me by The Crystals/Goodfellas (#15)
This is the song from when Henry and Karen enter the Copacabana and it is also maybe my favorite song in the whole world.
Pata Pata by Miriam Makeba/An Algorithmic Journey from Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? (#13)
Have you seen Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? It’s a warm, lovely, pitch perfect adaptation of the Judy Blume novel that nails being a movie that’s good for 12 year olds but is not so secretly for the moms in the crowd. This movie has a really nice soundtrack of late 60s and early 70s tunes and I was listening to a playlist someone had built for this movie when I got knocked off into the algorithmically concocted radio, which is where I came across this song.
Bigmouth Strikes Again by The Smiths/Bigmouth Strikes Again: The Smiths Show by Salty Brine (#10) (this one’s theater)
Here’s a little variety: In January, I went to see a theater piece at Joe’s Pub in which cabaret artist Salty Brine used The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead to tell the story of Frankenstein, intertwined with pieces of their own life. I don’t know if you’re reading the above sentence like “that’s a collection of appealing buzzwords” or “that sounds horrible” but I walked into this with an expectation firmly between those two points and you know what? It was fucking great. I still think about the ferocity with which Salty Brine cut out of a monologue to launch into song and roared the word “sweetness.” This kind of specific, un-categorizable theater feels like what New York’s all about, baby.
Freight Train by Nancy Whiskey, Chas McDevitt/Asteroid City (#9)
Another trailer song. Rewatching the Asteroid City trailer made me wonder if maybe I love this movie? I didn’t exactly when I watched it, but then again I had to pee the whole time.
Deewana Hai Dekho (#23), Yeh Ladka Hai Allah (#16), Suraj Hua Maddham (#12), You Are My Soniya (#8), Say “Shava Shava” (#4), Bole Chudiyan (#3) from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham…
I did a whole podcast episode about this movie so I won’t get into it too much here. Mostly I want to specify that the reason ‘Say “Shava Shava”’ is so high even though it’s one of the sillier and more embarrassing numbers in the movie, is that I am addicted to 3:00 when Shah Rukh Khan2 sings to a hallucination (?) of Kajol (she is at an entirely different party at this point?) and also at about 4:55 when SRK/Kajol sing the same refrain to their respective parents. It makes me cry!! Also whatever, this song is fun. But for the record, my actual favorites are “Bole Chudiyan” (obvious, boring of me, yet true) and “Yeh Ladka Hai Allah.”
ルージュの伝言 (“Lipstick Message”) (#6) by Yumi Arai and 夢の中へ (“In A Dream”) (#2) by Yuki Saito/Suzume
“Lipstick Message” is famously in Kiki’s Delivery Service and comes from the fabulously named album Cobalt Hour which sports the world’s greatest cover art. However, this year I was listening to Yumi Arai a lot, plus this new-to-me song by Yuki Saito3 because of the movie Suzume. Suzume is the new movie from Your Name director Makoto Shinkai sporting the following insane premise: a 17 year old girl named Suzume has to close a bunch of magic doors with the help of a hot, mysterious guy who turns into a chair to prevent a giant worm that causes earthquakes from escaping into our world. It’s one of the funniest movies I’ve seen all year, and very moving. In the movie, the chair boyfriend has a fantastic friend named Serizawa (funny, droll, has a little earring, doing a bad job of pretending he doesn’t care, all of which made him my movie crush obviously) who helps out Suzume and he has a really great driving playlist of Japanese 80s hits. I found someone who’d compiled that playlist and these were the two I listened to over and over.
Across the Stars from Star Wars (#22), Olympic Fanfare and Theme (#18), Short Round’s Theme from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (#11), inexplicably Olympic Fanfare again (#5), Slave Children’s Crusade from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (#1) by John Williams
I laughed out loud at my desk yesterday morning when my #1 song of the year was revealed to be “Slave Children’s Crusade.” Slave Children’s Crusade???? I don’t know what to say here. It’s a perfect piece of movie music featured in a movie that is both some of the best, nastiest, most thrilling action filmmaking ever and also WILDLY racist. This is my burden to bear…
It’s pretty funny Olympic Fanfare is on here twice. Don’t ask me why!
The One Girl: bad idea right? (#24) and all-american bitch (#7) by Olivia Rodrigo
I feel like every year One Girl—one maker of recently released, popular music—makes her way onto my list. It’s usually Mitski, sometimes Taylor, Paramore4 and Lorde are certainly candidates. This year it was Olivia Rodrigo, whose first album I liked fine in a very noncommittal way and whose second album I LOVE because every song sounds like Girl “The Middle” to me. If you’re not familiar with Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle,” it’s a song which inspires a deep desire to wake up and grab a piece of toast in a lightly bratty way as you walk out the door for another wretched, lovelorn, all-American day of high school. And that’s beautiful.
Three Outliers: Mardy Bum by Arctic Monkeys (#21), Candide: Overture by Leonard Bernstein (#17), This Charming Man by The Smiths (#14)
You might think to yourself, is the Bernstein on repeat because of Maestro? and the answer is absolutely not. I did listen to quite a lot of Mahler this year on account of the Maestro trailer, but “Candide: Overture” is just my other favorite song in the whole world.
My one disappointment is that when Titanic was re-released very early this year, I thought it would be funny if my #1 song of the year was “My Heart Will Go On” and I completely failed to make this happen. However, “Southampton” and “Rose” from the Titanic score made it in my top 100. Onwards and upwards!
Good movie, good song imo!
I know it’s not them singing. Yes, yes.
I know Paramore is 1 girl and some number of boys, but that’s Hayley Williams to me!