![]() ![]() ![]() In a much more comfortable register, Autumn confidently nails another 1960s hit, Gerry and the Pacemakers’ ‘Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying’, while Skylar works on earning their bus fare home. Later, much later, after the much-written-about “never, rarely, sometimes, always” scene, Autumn and her cousin Skylar hit a Midtown karaoke bar while killing time before their bus home from New York City. (Watching on is Sharon Van Etten as Autumn’s mother, adding extra grit if you’re a fan, which I am.) There’s the ‘He’s Got the Power’ opening song, which sees Flanigan’s Autumn alone on her high-school stage, acoustic guitar, glitter, pearls, a Pink Ladies-inspired jacket, performing an edgy cover, near the top of her vocal range, of a usually upbeat doo-wop tune about a guy who makes her do things she doesn’t wanna do, but she adores him anyway. GG: If we’re talking on-the-nose lyrics that work spectacularly well, I still haven’t recovered from the two music cues performed by Sidney Flanigan in Never Rarely Sometimes Always. JM: I’m highly in favor of Lovers Rock getting the one exception here.ĮK: Well, yes, but, then… Palm Springs will fight about it.ĪY: A vote in favor of throwing rules out of the window-we’ve had enough rules this year. GG: With Eurovision in mind, then, what are the rules here? How many bangers is a film allowed to have in our playlist? How will we choose between ‘Silly Games’ and ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ for Lovers Rock?!ĮK: In a normal year I would say one banger per film, but considering that 1) so many films were snatched from our clutches this year and 2) the films that were released were unusually generous in terms of just how many bangers we were given, I would say that anything goes. ‘Ja Ja Ding Dong’ is one of many original songs that do the job very well, but ‘Song-A-Long’ is the only real needle drop: a record-scratch moment where something you thought you knew appears in a new context, and the marriage is perfect. Ella, I enjoyed your description in your 50 favorite music cues piece for The Quietus: “There are fewer pleasures greater, at the movies, than the moment a perfect track starts at a perfect moment, and the marriage of music and film creates an entirely new beast, a work of art in that new connection alone.” It reminds me of Ekwa Msangi’s view, in her recent Letterboxd interview, that music is “the third language” in film.ĮK: Perhaps the most vivid 2020 example would be in the masterpiece that is Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, bursting at the seams with songs and needle drops. ![]() GG: There are iconic soundtracks, and then there are specific music moments in movies, where the film itself isn’t necessarily filled with wall-to-wall bangers à la Pulp Fiction or Trainspotting. GG: First off, how do we define a ‘needle drop’? Do we need to define a needle drop? Isn’t it obvious?ĮK: I feel like it’s a definition that we can spin so many different ways. The conversation below contains mild spoilers. Gemma Gracewood, Ella Kemp, Jack Moulton and Aaron Yap interrupt their holidays to compile a Letterboxd Spotify playlist of their favorite needle drops of the past year. Every year is a good year for music in movies but, for some reason, 2020’s music cues have stuck with us a bit harder than usual.
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