[Okay, well I've let everyone else have a go, so it's time I slapped my nuts on the line and had a go myself. I've cheated slightly and altered the theme for my own benefit, but hopefully you'll agree that it fits.]
I know this is cheating, but I thought it might be interesting, not least because I haven’t thought it through very clearly and I reckon my readers will be able to add way more to this post than I can. So get your comment fingers twitching and get on with it. We’ve seen what a song can do to a film, good or bad, by bringing all that extra contextual baggage with it when plopped into the middle of a key scene. Well, it works the other way round too, only songwriters tend to handle it an awful lot better.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a picture worth? A songwriter, with so few verses at their disposal, can add a lifetime’s worth of meaning and imagery into a movie. You can nail a person by describing a shit film they like, you can nail the atmosphere of an evening by talking about what you watched, you can nail a time and place by describing a movie that was popular at the time.
I’ve only got three examples here, but I am sure you can think of many more:
Firstly, Barefoot in the Park by Cinerama. David Gedge is a master of turning normal phraseology in a poetic way, but this song is one of his worst lyrical efforts if you ask me – cringeworthy rhymes like “it’s because you’re so sublime/ that I think about you all the time” really put me off. But the one and only great trick in this song is the couplet: “Let’s lie all day here in the dark/ and watch Barefoot in the Park”. With than one line he conveys everything that this song is about: that indulgent, lazy, amazed period when you first fall in love with someone and things like grotty days in bed watching romantic movies are the most cocooned and intense times you spend together. And how does it he do it? By co-opting all the emotional baggage of Barefoot in the Park and using it to express the mood of the scenario he’s describing. Neat and economical.
Secondly, Clem Snide’s Made For TV Movie. It’s not about a specific film, this, but it uses the connotations of being made for TV in a similar way. Instead of the heady heights of first love, Barzelay uses this trick to convey the normal everyday feeling conjured by the image of curling up on the sofa together and watching whatever happens to be on at the time. We’ve all had evenings like that. They’re ordinary, pedestrian and the absolute meat and potatoes of being with someone. It’s what you do in the non-special times that defines a relationship if you ask me, and this one phrase places you exactly in those times, and defines the emotional pitch of the song.
Finally, a bit of a cheat. There is one really obvious song about Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which fits entirely with what I am talking about in this post. But I’d rather talk about The Divine Comedy’s Woman of the World, which is also about the enigmatic Holly Golightly. Neil Hannon is big on conceits. Some of them, lots even, are grating and pretentious, but this is one of his more successful. Why? Well because it’s a little enigmatic. He’s singing about Holly herself, and in a more general sense about the film. But is he just casually singing about a movie, or is he using the iconic Golightly character to describe a woman he knows. Given this is on the same album as Frog Princess, it’s tempting to think that he might be using a well known character comparison to try and understand someone who he is struggling to come to terms with in real life. It’s probably not true, but it shows the power of bringing imagery into a song which carries a whole artistic back story to it that you could never hope to achieve in a chorus and a handful of brief verses.
Cinerama – Barefoot in the Park
Clem Snide – Made For TV Movie
The Divine Comedy – Woman of the World
Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!
