I am looking for studies that discuss the use of lyrics from popular songs to comment on action or character. In Nathaniel Epstein's BA Thesis he discussed how PT Anderson used lyrics By Aimee Mann this way in several of his films. I was wondering if there are other papers written on this topic. I did a fairly extensive search and found one paper that discussed this issue in connection with Thelma and Louise. Another paper talked about Rear Window but it was not really that relevant. A third paper was about Stephen Foster songs used in films. But that was about it. Any other suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Hi Yakov,
Just an idea: have you thought digging around "Norwegian wood", the film adaptation of Murakami's novel?
Best,
Serge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Wood_(film)
“Lose Yourself” - 8 Mile, “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing” - Armageddon, “Eye of the Tiger” - Rocky III, “When Doves Cry” - Purple Rain, “Stay (I Missed You)” - Reality Bites, “I Will Always Love You” - The Bodyguard, Remix of "Crazy in Love" - 50 Shades of Gray, “Flashdance… What A Feeling” - Flashdance, "The Power Of Love” - Back To The Future, “Happy” - Despicable Me 2, “Love Is Blindness” - The Great Gatsby, “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” - Dirty Dancing, "Eye of the Tiger"- Rocky III, "The Windmills of your Mind"- The Thomas Crown Affair, "Nights in White Satin"- Casino, "Moon River" - Breakfast at Tiffany's, "Somewhere" and "America" - West Side Story, "Unchained Melody"- Ghost, "Summertime"- Porgy and Bess......
Dear Yakov, most films do. It is a sure manner of connecting to the viewer. In general, soundtrack is one of the important elements of film, ad people seldom notice it. It almost works at a subliminal level. Most film theorist agree on this. I have a bibliography on film I prepared a few years back. I remember I included papers and book chapters on this subject. I will search and let you know.
Best regards, Lilliana
To add to your great list, dear Jorge, a thriller that is based on a popular song: the song Misty, interpreted by Sara Vaughn, in the movie Play Misty for Me (1971). Great performance by Vaughn and superb acting by Clint Eastwood, who also directed the film. :-)
Best regards, Lilliana
Dear Yakov, the subject you're investigating is quite vast since it may embrace the use itself of theme songs (pre-existing or original, like in the "Rocky" case Jorge mentions or, for instance, "The Graduate" by Mike Nichols, "Philadelphia" by Jonathan Demme), pop scoring and so forth. I also appreciated the use of "Wonderful world" by Sam Cooke in Peter Weir's "Witness" (1985). Musical comedies (especially the "juke box" type, such as "Moulin Rouge" and "Across the Universe") are a huge source too, but maybe this is not what you're looking for. I would suggest you to consider also the movies taken from Dennis Potter's BBC Series of the 70s and 80s (worth watching themselves!): Pennies from Heaven (H. Ross 1981) and The Singing Detective (K. Gordon, 2003). Alain Resnais himself paid a tribute to Dennis Potter and his use of singing comment as a defamiliarization device in his movie "On connaît la chanson" (1998), which uses French pop songs. An interesting use of pop songs may be traced in Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" (2006), in particular in the "I want candy" sequence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLJ1vuUWprA.
Best wishes
Song lyrics are commonly used to give clarity to an ambiguous scene to a degree in which a purely instrumental orchestral score is not normally capable. At the opening of a film lyrics are also often used to provide information about the narrative or the principle characters, Elvis Presley's films regularly use this technique. Lyrics can also be employed to voice a characters thoughts or as a form of authorial expressivity, commenting on aspects of a character's personality or circumstances which they, themself, may not be aware of, but which the director wishes the audience to know. Additionally, knowledge of the artist singing may further contribute to a song's meaning as it may be used as a more subtle device to help in reading a scene.
Best wishes
As some of the answers already stated: any song used in film is commenting on action or character. Song lyrics can be used as dialogue as in Moulin Rouge, singers can be used as commentators in a film such as Nat King Cole in Cat Ballou or Jonathan Richman in There's something about Mary.
Easy Rider, The Graduate, Apocalypse Now are obvious examples of American films that come immediately to mind. There are many examples in Mexican and Brazilian cinema (Estrada da vida, etc). If you are ready to look east, Indian cinema (both popular and art-house) use lyrics in more creative ways than anywhere else in the world (because it has been a 3000 year old narrative tradition where stories are told intercepted/ through songs). For art-house cinema, you can refer to Ritwik Ghatak's heartbreaking use of Tagore's music in many of his films, specially 'The Cloud Capped Star' and Subarnorekha (The Golden Line). Ghatak uses the entire range from folk music to classical in his films. You can also look at Satyajit Ray's innumerable films (particularly poignant is the use of a Tagore song, again!) in 'Kanchenjungha'. In most Hindi popular films, songs/lyrics are written for the film (often by major poets) and so possibly they do not support what you are looking for but you will get much-more-than-you-can-handle only in Bengali cinema, both of the past and the present. Many films take their titles from lines of well-known music (folk). A good recent example is Ranjan Ghosh's 'Hridmajhare' (lit. at the core of my heart). I am not even talking of other languages and other cinemas. Most of the Bengali films mentioned here can be found on youtube.
I think you may also examine the question from a cognitive perspective: spectators not always catch the comment behind the use of a certain piece of popular music in films, either because of attentional issues, or because the editing is designed for a subtle, or not so explicit effect. From a cognitive perspective, the commentary itself wouldn't be but one of many effects that we, as spectators, can reach from the cues provided by the film; as opposed to a necessary interpretation of the film form, in line with the intentions of the filmmaker. The latter is not always the case.
I'm thinking about the use that Wong Kar-Wai makes of Nat King Cole's renditions of "Quizás, quizás, quizás" (Osvaldo Farrés) and "Aquellos ojos verdes" (Adolfo Utrera and Nilo Menendez) in "In the Mood for Love" (2000). We have a Hong-Kong film, an American performer, and two songs in Spanish that can only "comment" on narrative development for those who understand the lyrics. The filmmaker himself had to make someone else translate the songs for him, but their initial appeal had to do a lot more with genre and mood than with "contents"; and I bet most spectators get those other effects more than the literal commentary. As we experience that film, we construe the tragic romance between the characters from aspects of the music, other than their lyrics.
In current Hollywood practice, I'm beginnig to wonder if the shorter list wouldn't be which films don't use popular songs in one way or another.
Use of pop songs to compress situations (Tootsie: 'Something's Telling me it might be you"), set time frames (Back to the Future: "Mr Sand Man"), or just fill the gaps is rather staggering. It was an interesting idea in the eighties.
now it's just a trope
Most filmmakers especially in Nigeria may like to create their own scores for their films, yet the use of popular lyrics is a re-occurring decimal in many genre of films