“Speak to the heart”: The songs David Lynch felt compelled to recommend
In artistic communities, there’s often a desire to demonise the internet as the enemy, but for David Lynch, it was simply another tool to connect.
Especially in Lynch’s older years, and crucially during Covid, when manning a full film set was no longer attainable, the internet became his main arena. In early 2020, he started sharing his weather reports once again.
First started in 2005, Lynch initially did exactly what the title promised. He’d report on the weather in LA with sprinkles of wisdom and humour. But in 2020, when shielding from the pandemic and unable to leave his home, the reports changed. They became simply about whatever Lynch wanted them to be about – sometimes wisdom to do with depression or creativity, sometimes sharing recommendations, but often, he was compelled to share music.
For anyone with any level of knowledge about Lynch’s work, it’s no surprise that music forever played a huge role in his life. As a child, he saw The Beatles’ first-ever US show and was blown away. In his own movies, his use of featured songs or scores felt just as important as any plot point, and all of it stemmed from the simple fact that Lynch was a big music fan, always keeping his ear to the ground for new music as well as loving the classics.
The songs he felt compelled to share in these videos prove that – “Today I was thinking about the song…” is how he’d always begin, before diving into whatever track was on his mind.
His classic recommendations spanned genres from Marvin Gaye’s soul classic ‘Heard It Through The Grapevine’, to Pink Floyd’s cinematic rock epic ‘Comfortably Numb’, to Mazzy Star’s endlessly wistful song ‘Fade Into You’. Or when it comes to modern tunes, one week he’d be thinking about Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’, and the next it would be Kanye West’s ‘Blood On The Leaves’. Over the years, and over the course of the episodes, he recommended hundreds of tracks from names like Bob Dylan, Portishead, Sparklehorse, Buddy Holly and Selena and beyond, as well as discussing his own soundtracks and scores.
In true Lynchian fashion, he offered up no explanation. It’s not like Lynch was reviewing these tracks, or even commenting on them at all. Instead, they simply sat amongst the weather report as a detail as simple as a clear sky or a bit of breeze – they were simply another marker of mood or atmosphere, just like music is used in his films and TV shows.
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It feels reminiscent of the performances in Twin Peaks: The Return, and as each act was hand-picked by Lynch, the lineup playing at the Roadhouse was eclectic, including names like Nine Inch Nails alongside Eddie Vedder or Sharon Van Etten – it didn’t need explaining or to make sense to anyone but Lynch when it came to how the artist or the song fit with the mood of the episode.
Much like the songs he felt moved to share in his web series, it all came down to energy and vibe, connecting to his belief that “music can say intelligent things,” but that “it can also speak to the heart”.
