Far Out 40: The best songs from movie soundtracks
While a film is a portal into an unknown world, the music that soundtracks it is what connects us. It gives us the confidence to grip the steering wheel with one hand, roll down the window, and cruise down Britain’s crumbling A-roads like it’s Route 66 without a care about how ridiculous we look in reality.
They inject the necessary colour into a scene by amplifying the most prevalent emotion, and when done well, they completely subvert our expectations. When tender pieces soundtrack gore or upbeat songs walk us through a moment of tranquillity, we view both the music and film in a different, more nuanced light.
While Patrick Bateman decapitates an unknowing Paul Allen in American Psycho, the use of Huey Lewis’ ‘Hip To Be Square’ is indeed humorous at first, but it helps speak to the film’s wider critique of yuppy culture. Or when Jordan Belfort looks over a sea of chaos in the Stratton Oakmont offices in Wolf Of Wall Street, the crowd’s expectation of sonic chaos is flipped as the hauntingly calm vocals of Howlin Wolf’s ‘Smokestack Lightnin’’ step forward to call attention to the prowling animalism of Belfort’s 1980s hedonism.
What follows is a moment so iconic that it’s impossible to disconnect the song from the scene. While I don’t own a translucent Fisherman jacket and an axe, I almost always bend my knees and shake my hips like Patrick Bateman whenever I hear Huey Lewis’ track.
“That’s one of the things about using music in movies that’s so cool, is the fact that if you do it right, if you use the right song, in the right scene; really when you take songs and put them in a sequence in a movie right, it’s about as cinematic a thing as you can do,” Quentin Tarantino once explained. “And when you do it right, and you hit it right, then the effect is you can never really hear this song again without thinking about that image from the movie.”
While Tarantino’s filmography was the natural starting point in compiling a playlist of the all-time greatest movie songs, the floodgates soon open, and directors from all chapters of cinema history subtly remind you of their elite music taste. From Guy Ritchie’s Snatch to Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, this playlist covers some of the most beloved film soundtracking moments.
Far Out Magazine’s full list of the best songs from film soundtracks
- The Wailers – ‘Burnin’ And Lootin’’
- Isaac Hayes – ‘Main Title “Truck Turner”’
- Alex Turner – ‘Stuck on the puzzle’
- Oscar Isaac – ‘Green, Green Rocky Road’
- Otis Redding – ‘Hard To Handle’
- Bob Dylan – ‘The Man In Me’
- Urge Overkill – ‘Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon’
- Al Green – ‘Let’s Stay Together’
- Lou Reed – ‘Perfect Day’
- Iggy Pop – ‘Nightclubbing’
- The High Numbers – ‘Zoot Suit’
- The Rolling Stones – ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’’
- Simon and Garfunkel – ‘April Come She Will’
- TRex – ‘I Love To Boogie’
- Underworld – ‘Born Slippy’
- Ol’ Dirty Bastard – ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’
- Aerosmith – ‘Sweet Emotion’
- The Edgar Winter Group – ‘Free Ride’
- Grand Funk Railroad – ‘Feelin’ Alright’
- Howlin’ Wolf – ‘Smokestack Lightnin’’
- The Mamas and The Papas – ‘California Dreamin’’
- Brian Eno – ‘Deep Blue Day’
- David Bowie – ‘Golden Years’
- Stealers Wheel – ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’
- Maceo And The Macks – ‘Cross The Tracks (We Better Go Back)’
- Primal Scream – ‘Come Together’
- Oasis – ‘Fuckin’ In The Bushes’
- EZ Rollers – ‘Walk This Land’
- John Lennon – ‘Beautiful Boy’
- The Doors – ‘The End’
- Harry Nilsson – ‘Everybody’s Talkin’
- Joni Mitchell – ‘Both Sides Now’
- The Brothers Johnson – ‘Strawberry Letter 23’
- The Beach Boys – ‘God Only Knows’
- Blur – ‘Sing’
- Stevie Nicks – ‘Edge of Seventeen’
- The Velvet Underground – ‘Oh! Sweet Nuthin’
- Fontaines DC – ‘A Hero’s Death’
- Huey Lewis and the News – ‘It’s Hip to Be Square’
- The Beatles – ‘Twist and Shout’
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