The usage of popular music in film is probably one of the hardest elements to master in filmmaking. When handled well, pop music can serve both as an emotional stimulus and a way of capturing a particular era in time. At its worst, it becomes a cheap showcase for passing fads and trends, causing a film to become horribly dated even before it arrives on video.
The cardinal sin of intermingling pop music and film is to include songs just because they're familiar. Old or new, popularity does not automatically mean that a song is a necessary ingredient. Especially if it's a song that everyone knows, even though they may not like it. Lynyrd Skynyrd's \Sweet Home Alabama"" always seems to pop up in movies, usually as a way of setting a tone of country spirit or joyous revelry. It's not the worst song to feature in a movie, but it's extremely overused. I came up with five movies featuring it just off the top of my head, and there are assuredly more. Ironically, the soundtrack sold for the movie ""Sweet Home Alabama"" does not have the original version, but rather a horrifying cover by Jewel that should be considered a crime against humanity to play more than once every ten years.
Much like film, pop music evokes memories and feelings. Unfortunately, this can have an adverse effect, even in the hands of the most ingenious director. Music that already has a particular stigma attached to it is very hard to erase from the mind of an audience. Even harder is predicting how current music will be perceived in the future. A perfect example of this occurs in Brian DePalma's ""Scarface."" By using early '80s songs such as ""She's on Fire"" during dance club scenes, the tone and feel of a Miami club from 1983 is captured effectively. However, the scene features a little too much emphasis on the music. Time was not very kind to most music from the early 1980s, and any time Al Pacino is seen dancing a scene comes off as ridiculously comical. This is hardly anything to blame DePalma for, as it's extremely tough to capture a historical era and still have it seem fresh and relevant over time.
Most of the time pop music succeeds it is because in film is because it was thought of at the ground level, taking on an importance rivaling elements such as characters or sets. ""Goodfellas,"" arguably the best example of how pop music can effectively integrate with film, is a movie in which music is almost a character in itself. Martin Scorsese is a known encyclopedia of pop music, and had a list of songs from the get go that he wanted to feature in scenes. More so than that, the incredible ""Layla"" montage, in which various characters are found dead while the classic Derek and the Dominoes song plays, was actually shot with particular segments of the song playing during shooting so that the camera would move to the same rhythm and feel of the song. Quentin Tarantino is another artist who knows how to use pop music, using both famous and unheard of tracks that add just the right amount of style to a scene. Cameron Crowe is also effective at tastefully adding pop music, as ""Say Anything..."" and ""Almost Famous"" are films that are defined in part by their songs but still manage to retain artistic credibility and not seem gimmicky.
In the end, pop music is always a gamble. Talented artists have made choices that have turned out to be dreadful in retrospect, and horrid directors have somehow accidentally made great soundtracks that stand the test of time. But there are ways to sense if pop music is appropriate. If it's effectively adding to the development of a character or setting a certain mood, odds are it will at least look justified, even if it isn't received as well as planned. But don't add songs just because you can, and don't add something just because it's popular and will sell soundtracks.
-E-mail Dan Marfield at ddmarfield@wisc.edu
