The artist that Quentin Tarantino called “the singer-songwriter of her generation”
He’s not just a master of the screen or storytelling, but Quentin Tarantino is also a master of sound. Just like Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola, and even Zack Snyder, Tarantino is famed for his so-called “needle drops” or, to you and me, his use of music in his movies.
Whether it’s the excellent usage of the Steelers Wheel classic ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ in Reservoir Dogs, ‘Across 110th Street’ by Bobby Womack in Jackie Brown or the prominent placement of ‘Misirlou’ by Dick Dale and Chuck Berry’s ‘You Never Can Tell’ (among any number of others) in Pulp Fiction, so many of Tarantino’s most iconic sequences are soundtracked by equally iconic songs.
Alongside his long-time music supervisor of choice, Mary Ramos, Tarantino evidently has an exemplary ear for music. “One of the things I do when I am starting a movie,” the acclaimed director has said, “Or when I have an idea for a film is, I go through my record collection and just start playing songs, trying to find the personality of the movie, find the spirit of the movie. Then, boom, eventually I’ll hit one, two or three songs, or one song in particular, ‘Oh, this will be a great opening credit song’”.
With such an extensive and varied record collection to flick through, it’s no wonder that such great music has made its way into his movies. Among his favourite albums, although not necessarily ones that have turned up in his work, Tarantino has singled out Dylan’s seminal Blood on the Tracks, Elmer Bernstein’s The Great Escape, Elvis’ The Sun Sessions compilation and the soundtrack album Revenge by Jack Nitzsche.
But it isn’t only old music that gets Tarantino excited. Speaking during a 2006 episode of the Sundance Channel series Iconclasts—a show which brought together two visionary artists from separate fields to discuss their lives and work—Tarantino was effusive in his praise of the other artist the show had paired him with, Fiona Apple.
“Fiona is the singer-songwriter of her generation,” he said right at the top of the programme. “Her writing is so personal; her words and her rhymes and her phrases”.
And who could argue with him? From her debut release Tidal, through her masterpieces When the Pawn…, Extraordinary Machine, The Idler Wheel and Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Apple has consistently pushed both the regular boundaries of what you can do with or expect from a contemporary song and her own genius.
“She’s got such a gifted voice”, he continued in the documentary, “And she’s such a gifted performer and such a gifted musician, and you could talk about her for days and not even bring that up, just talk about the writing, all right, and her words and her rhymes and her phrases and her microscope on herself and on, you know, the human heart”.
In the documentary, the pair got together at Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios in Austin, TX, while Tarantino was shooting his 2007 slasher Death Proof to talk about their influences, their passions, their talents and visions, and their appreciation for each other’s work. “I have to tell you, I just love Extraordinary Machine so much,” Tarantino says to Apple of her most recent album. “After I got it, it was like I’d go to my record room every day-I have a record room right next to my bedroom-and it got to be one of those things where it was one of those albums that I had to play every day for like, weeks”.
“That’s the greatest thing to hear because I can remember sitting in your record room hearing you talk about other albums”, Apple responds, “And I can remember thinking that I wanted [mine] to be one of the albums you were excited about!”
Despite his love of her music, Tarantino has yet to licence any Fiona Apple songs into his films, but perhaps he’ll make room for her in his much anticipated and always rumoured tenth and final film. Her songs can be found in other movies, though, from through the years, like Pleasantville, Hustlers, The Idea of You, This is 40, Candyman and Bridesmaids.
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