Chris here. This past summer I started a series here at The Film Experience called Soundtracking that takes a deeper look at music in the movies. I hope you've loved reading (and listening) along!
2017 proved an appropriate year to start this musical exploration as brilliantly used tracks kept showing up in movies and television shows. Even some things that I didn't care for (Baby Driver, sorry) or missed entirely (Twin Peaks, sorry) proved that music is another storytelling tool that can define a narrative in interesting ways. Even films like The Florida Project and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 gave us memorable needle drops! Before Soundtracking brings a close to its first film year with full pieces on I, Tonya and Call Me By Your Name in the next two weeks, let's take a look at the best musical moments of TV and Film of the past year...
Top 5 TV Musical Moments...
5. Difficult People - "Julie Julie"
It was inevitable that the dearly departed and short-lived Difficult People would give us a major musical sequence at some point. But the result was a surprising Aimee Mann-penned melodic dive into our heroine's depression and delusion - revealing the sad-sweet core buried beneath the show's punchlines.
4. Big Little Lies - "Cold Little Heart"
Never underestimate the power of a perfect theme song. Like the rest of the mood-setting on the series' soundtrack, the sound cuts right to the gorgeous longing within Monterey - and if the song's opening electric cooing doesn't place you right on its beaches, you probably watched the show on mute or skipped the credits.
3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - "The First Penis I Saw"
This season of The CW's cult show was as musically delightful as ever, including the viral hilarity of "Let's Generalize About Men". But the reasons for this ode to sexual memory making the cut are twofold: this pairing of casual intensity and whimsy is where Crazy Ex-Girlfriend always excels. And second, Donna Lynn Champlin remains the most underrated dynamo on television.
2. Girls - "Desperado"
Speaking of penises we've seen - Girls may have had a patchy final season, but "American Bitch" was an all-timer for the controversial series. Hannah faced off against a prominant writer after writing about his sexual coercion of admiring young women, ending with him exposing himself to her and Hannah being the one forced to contemplate his humanity. Underscored with Rihanna's catclysmic tidal rage, a sea of women flooded the frame for one chilling, timely conclusion.
1. RuPaul's Drag Race - "So Emotional"
Did you think there was another option? Even for a show where this season also brought us Peppermint doing The Village People and Valentina stopping gay time by not knowing the lyrics to Ariana Grande? The crowning this season provided a new sudden death lipsync challenge, and eventual victor Sasha Velour used it as an opportunity to show a side of herself that her successful run never revealed. Her competitor Shea Couleé actually performed expertly, but this was still a bloodbath. How many of Ru's queens can say they redefined a song by such a legend as Whitney?
Honorable TV Mentions: Transparent's season 4 fascination with Jesus Christ Superstar, the power ballads of Glow, and Big Mouth's crass original tracks.
Top 10 Film Musical Moments:
10. Nocturama - "My Way"
Strange and ominous, this moment feels like an exhale from the film's tense and expressively sparse proceedings. As if the film wasn't already morally complicated enough, how exactly are we supposed to feel about this particular track being a bomber's manner of self-actualization? And yet it's queer, oddly cathartic, and Shirley freaking Bassey.
9. A Fantastic Woman - "Ombra mai fu"
It's not particularly spoilery to note that A Fantastic Woman closes on Daniela Vega's gorgeous voice (yes, that's really her singing), but the punctuation of her final aria in the film's final moments in simply captivating. We've already heard her singing, but here she really finds her voice - and the film makes that feel less literal and obvious than it sounds. Brava!
8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) - "Genius Girl"
This musical family gives some laughs with the Oscar-eligible "Byron/Myron", but this father/daughter moment is the one that speaks volumes. In one melancholy sit at the piano, you see their lifelong duet morphing before your eyes - happier past, shaky present, and uncertain future all in one performance.
7. The Shape of Water - "You'll Never Know"
I hesitate to describe this moment in case some readers have yet to see the film, and this passage is one of its most special and organically revealed. It's a graceful slip into the heart of Water's heroine and the film itself, and its grandest flourish.
6. Happy End - "Chandelier"
A Sia song in a movie and it's not the end credits, for once? Look, we've all had a sloppy karaoke night, but we should be thankful it likely wasn't as deeply sad and unfortunately funny as what occurs in Happy End. *handstand*
5. Coco - the final "Remember Me"
Another moment that dare not be spoiled, even though you can safely predict everything about this moment from the first time of many that the song features in the film. However, the emotional payoff cannot be denied no matter when this very moment is projected in your mind. It's that good.
4. Call Me By Your Name - "Love My Way"
A moment to inspire a million memes and "an army on the dancefloor" jokes. But aside from Luca Guadagnino's sharp sense of what makes rock and roll cinematic, the catharsis of Oliver's dancing and Elio's watchful longing quickly establishes the dichotomy of their courtship before any moves are made - with the glorious new wave sound filling the space between them.
3. Atomic Blonde - "Father Figure"
You simply can't convince me that the image of Charlize Theron beating the shit out of a bunch of dudes with a rubber hose while George Michael plays in the background isn't one of the gayest things we saw onscreen in 2017. Or perhaps anything more badass. It was like a musical dance sequence, but with punches substituting for a tap routine.
2. Lady Bird - "Crash Into Me"
Greta Gerwig's adoration for all of Lady Bird's moving parts extends to even its music, with glowing Sondheim sequences and Alanis references throughout. The DMB track is the most rooted in its central themes of affection and adoration, with its hero's proclamation that she loves it providing the film one of its many turning points. Gerwig gets that sometimes the best love songs are shared in the mutual longing (and silliness) of friendship rather than in romantic relationships, making for a full circle moment for Christine and Julie that also beautifully closes their chapter. Admit it, Lady Bird made you love this song again too.
1. Get Out - "(I've Had) The Time of My Life"
A lesser film would have cut this brief scene or at least omitted the music in Allison William's headphones all together. It's something of a microcosm of the film itself: ruefully hilarious and utterly unnerving, with easily accessed but unexpected observations. Borrowed from Dirty Dancing, it's the white girl-est song from the white girl-est movie, and here that kind of bland, empty affection turns into something humorously sinister. Creepy and keenly observed in equal measure, the Fruit Loop scene is one of the film's best moments taken to a whole other level of specificity by the song choice that underscores it.
Honorable Movie Mentions: BPM channeling Bronski Beat, Elton John subtly christening a queer moment in Battle of the Sexes, and forgotten 90s jams in The Disaster Artist.
All Soundtracking installments can be found here!