The songs that never failed to put a smile on David Lynch’s face: “It’s so beautiful”
David Lynch might have chosen cinema as his primary medium of artistic expression, but he was always absorbing artistic influences from all kinds of sources.
Initially training as a painter and travelling to Europe to pursue his journey as a brushman, the American auteur eventually became the most popular ‘Master of Surrealism’ in film history, but there were many milestones that helped him along the way. From living in Philadelphia while coming up with the grotesque absurdity of Eraserhead to transcendental meditation, the Mulholland Drive director was always fishing for ideas anywhere he could find them – a metaphor that he often used himself.
Among the various art forms that contributed to the evolution of his cinematic approach, music was also at the forefront. The best example was his many collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti on important projects such as Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, without which Lynch’s surrealism might have never found its final flourish on the big screen.
In fact, he even staged a characteristically strange performance titled Industrial Symphony No 1 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Badalamenti, which ended up not only enriching his own creative partnership with the composer but also kickstarting Julee Cruise’s musical career. Lynch produced and wrote on Cruise’s first two albums, beginning with Floating into the Night, which earned chart success as well as critical acclaim.
When Lynch told GQ about the songs that never failed to make him smile, they turned out to be nothing like his own work. That in itself shows how much range he had from the very start. He could shift gears, borrow different tools, and pour them into whatever project he was working on. It’s part of why so much of his art landed the way it did.
Unable to single out one particular piece when the subject was broached, Lynch said: “Oh, man, so many songs just thrill me to the core. So many songs. Music is a huge emotional rush. Sometimes a thrill beyond the beyond.”
However, when pushed, he answered: “Oh, let’s see. I don’t know the name of it. Richard Strauss, the first one of the Four Last Songs [‘At Sunset’, aka ‘Im Abendrot’]—it was in Wild at Heart. Just put that music on loud and I could start crying. It’s so beautiful. There’s a bunch of things. ‘Adagio for Strings’ by Samuel Barber—Andre Previn’s version. And let’s see. ‘Song To The Siren’ by This Mortal Coil. Elizabeth Fraser drives me crazy. There are so many pieces of music, I just burst into tears, it’s so beautiful.”
On other occasions, Lynch had cited pioneers like Otis Redding who made him “cry like a baby”, but it was the likes of Richard Strauss and Elizabeth Fraser that invoked a complex emotion within him, where he smiled through the tears just because of how beautiful the entire experience was. While Lynch’s discography is obviously not as celebrated when compared to his cinematic output, the latter would never have existed if it wasn’t for his keen interest in music and how it shapes the visual medium.
