THE TOP 30 PIECES OF MOVIE MUSIC OF ALL TIME

Well, well, what do you know? It looks like I have at least one more list in me after all. And a list I am actually pretty proud of, even though it does seem to reflect not only my own limited experience but also the obvious cultural myopia of a young-ish modern day American brought up in the stiflingly insular atmosphere of a closely knit Hollywood market wherein even an (ex) movie buff like myself can get to see only so many foreign films. But I *am* proud of it, on the whole. Before I begin there is one rule here: movies that are already concert films, animated or otherwise (e.g. “Fantasia”), are out. I had to trim the fat somehow.


30. The theme from “Christine” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQeYsgAysTk)

Something odd happens when I listen to this atmospheric John Carpenter theme from this atmospheric John Carpenter film. I…just…can’t…keep…still. Go ahead. Try it yourself. Try not to sway and fidget to the beat just a little. Just try.


29. “La Resistance/Blame Canada” from “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut”. I’ve actually never seen the film before (I’m not a big “South Park” fan) but I can’t deny that I’ve nonetheless watched this medley at Youtube about twenty or thirty times now. It starts off as a genuinely gallant-sounding parody of every epic musical you’ve ever seen and then before you’re forty-five seconds in it has quickly degenerated into a contest between about five or so competing ballads. Within the space of little over a minute and a half you’ve got everything from Satan singing a classic “I want more” song to a middle-aged mousy woman chirping about how badly she yearns to murder Celine Dion. Rarely has so much been done in such little time with so much build-up. I dare not link you to it, though, given the board’s content policy. You could find it easily enough at Youtube on your own.


28. “When the River Meets the Sea” from “Emmett Otter’s Jugband Christmas” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOoXTggzoFk) First off let me apologize for that link. For some bizarre reason there seems to be no version of the song anywhere at Youtube which doesn’t have John Denver singing on it even though he didn’t write the song, didn’t write the film, didn’t sing it in the film, didn’t play any roles and to the best of my knowledge has nothing to do with anything. I’m not a fan. But it’s worth it anyway. I don’t know how many people have even heard of this movie but it’s a classic. Few songs have dealt with the subject of death (in a family-friendly way, no less!) as well as this one has: “Like a flower that has blossomed in this dry and barren sand we are born, and born again, most gracefully…The winds of time will take us, with a sure and steady hand—when the river meets the sea.”


27. “Transylvanian Lullaby” from “Young Frankenstein” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2zM1DnzQHQ) This theme (and really, the whole soundtrack) sort of *transforms* the film. It provides a dramatic backdrop to the goofiness of the proceedings. And really, that is the whole style and beauty of the film. It’s so deathly SERIOUS in everything it does, right down to the smallest details in the timing and lighting, and at times even achieves genuine pathos or suspense. That juxtaposition defines the work. When you hear this tune being played on the violin you forget for a moment that you’re not really watching one of the old Universal monster movies. Only, when you think about it, you actually are: “We’re still having nightmares from five times before!” And yet, there is still a distinctly tongue-in-cheek flavor to the arrangement, with that over-the-top blaring of horns. It’s a difficult balance to strike.


26. “Down and Out” from “Bugsy Malone” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBdat4QeEr8)

This is in and of itself perhaps about as close to a perfect song as I think you may ever hear; the problem is in the execution. This is, for all intents and purposes, a war cry: as such it should be sung with passion, with vim, and not with virtual apathy.


25. “Princes of the Universe” from “Highlander” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkeGMaq0O98)

This song sums up the film “Highlander” so well: there’s so much pomp and operatic belligerence—but with such an undercurrent of danger and fear. The song is proud and yet as with all pride there is insecurity beneath. It’s sort of the anthem of all rock stars, the Ballad of Those Who Proclaim for the Whole World to Hear That I Am NOT Past My Prime, Thank You Very Much, I Am Still On Top of the World and Always Will Be, Heh Heh Heh Who Am I Kidding? Which is not only a brave little tongue-in-cheek move for a band like Queen to make in the eighties but also a profound statement to make in a movie about a group of “immortal” (not really) people who are at the very end of an ages-long competition to slaughter each other for an unspeakable prize that only one of them can survive to claim.


24. The theme from “Fargo” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4NCC0dUXks)

This is the kind of music you’d ordinarily expect to hear during a flashback segment or in a silent film by a German expressionist and not in the opening credits of a feature like this. I don’t know why it works so well as the theme for a film about a series of screwball incidents involving crime and scandal in the friendly Midwest, except that it does sound COLD. Cold and isolated. Remote. All I can say really tell you is, it works. Very, very well.


23. “Lose Yourself” from “8 Mile” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4Uv_4jGgAM , offensive language warning)

I haven’t seen “8 Mile” but no one who was around when the film came out could escape this song. I never talked to anyone who wanted to either. It just builds…and builds…and builds. And just when you think it can’t possibly get any more intense it proves you wrong, each time, as Eminem tops himself with false climax after false climax and cannonfire turns to thunder and thunder to supervolcanoes. The song is merciless. I can only imagine how dramatic the scene in the film must have been.


22. The theme from the BBC “Miss Marple” movies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5wSGzqNmPU)

What a refreshing approach this was! The theme tune to a series of films based on books about murders would presumably have been all dark and ominous, like the theme from the David Sachet “Poirot” series on TV at the same time—which, don’t get me wrong, worked very well in its own way, it’s just that this was much cleverer and more creative. It saw past Dame Christie’s annoying, borderline certifiable cynicism about human nature (reading her novels it’s hard not to get the distinct impression that Christie really believed along with her own characters, and much like The Joker, that everyone is just one bad day away from committing Murder Most Foul), to something much more roseate beneath the surface. An idealism, even. A sort of wide-eyed nostalgia for the Britain of the 20’s and 30’s. To make that the central theme of the films underlines the series with something cheerful and hopeful and gives the series an atmosphere so different from what it would otherwise be that I can’t even imagine what these films would be like with different music.


21. “Flying Dreams” from “The Secret of NIMH” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0-nS6KeDwU)

The sweetest, most magical lullaby ever composed, from the best animated film of all time. Jerry Goldsmith has written many lengthy, complicated masterpieces for what seems like a thousand-piece orchestra but sometimes short and simple is better.


20. “Going the Distance” from “Rocky” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvQkl7qa6RQ)

Few people can write inspiring tunes to get your blood pumping like Bill Conti can. He’s turned out masterful score after masterful score along these lines: “Rocky”, “The Karate Kid”, “Masters of the Universe” (hey, I’m talking about the music, not the movie!). When this tune in particular starts playing during the big match in the first film, you start thinking that the series can never possibly top itself. Then it starts playing again during the training sequence in the second film and you wonder how you could have possibly been so wrong.


19. “Stonehenge” from “This Is Spinal Tap” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMMy9t0TJNE)

This song works on a number of levels. For one thing it’s from one of the funniest scenes in film history, with a carefully paced build to a tremendous punch line. For another thing it brilliantly parodies an entire musical style—that whole Iron Maiden/Judas Priest thing. The entire era of the late 70’s and early 80’s, really. Finally…let’s all close our eyes, wince, take a deep breath and admit that’s it a pretty decent number in its own right. There is too much reverb, true, but the song is very well arranged with suitably eerie execution, euphonic instrumentation and quite hilarious lyrics. Admit it: wouldn’t you turn it up if this came on the radio?


18. “Victory Celebration” from “Return of the Jedi” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II04E2GEJG8)

Let this serve as a lesson to you: not all of the changes made to the original trilogy are bad things. “Yub Nub” was…well, simply terrible. Not at all becoming of John Williams’s talents. It sounded very much like something you’d hear at a middle school play. This music, on the other hand, is catharsis itself distilled into the form of music.


17. Chico Marx’s rendition of “All I Do Is Dream of You” in “A Night at the Opera” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkCiRSDPIzk)

This scene was a first for me. Specifically it was the first time in all my life I ever found a melody funny. That’s how thoroughly the Marx brothers understood comedy: they can make you laugh at a *tune*, at notes. I mean, the song itself, in its normal version, sounds like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5zHxr77K1g. That’s not even remotely the same, is it? Chico’s version is like Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments stitching bodies together into a new creature altogether. This, folks, is the magic of arrangement. Just look at those kids laugh.


16. The shark’s theme from “Jaws” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYpJctAE9S4)

John Williams really hit the nail on the head here, effectively evoking the sound of a train speeding up and barreling at you. There’s the steady rumble of the train’s own mechanical heartbeat (it even literally *sounds* somewhat like a train!), and then it’s followed by a little whistle from the French horn, and then it gets louder and louder….


15. “Battle Mix” from “Toys” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsn4RoqrhSk)

Ah, “Toys”, the single most underrated movie ever made. Why do people appreciate you so little? They may not understand you, film, but I do. I love you. Don’t anyone ever tell you that you aren’t special. Anyway, this piece starts off as a simple remix of “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and then becomes somewhat of an oddly placed overture, a sort of reprise or medley of pretty much half the soundtrack. You hear a little of “Let Joy and Innocence Prevail” (once the world’s dreamiest lounge music and now its most thunderous battle march), “At the Closing of the Year”, General Zevo’s theme, and probably a few other things I can’t easily identify—bringing the soundtrack to a climax along with the plot. I love big culminations like that. This would probably be way up high on the top ten if it were better mixed.


14. The “Back to the Future” overture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG9n7SuVBg0)

There is a reason why Alan Silvestri’s famous “Back to the Future” leitmotif has so often been used in advertisements and homages to represent the magic of Hollywood: there is a feeling of adventure to it, of childlike wonder. You can sort of smell the popcorn here, hear the rattatatt of the projector running in the back room behind the auditorium. Come to think of it the snare drum there even *sounds* a little like a projector.


13. The overture from “Lawrence of Arabia” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuxHLzwlDY4)

Maurice Jarre wrote some truly stunning, sweeping, theatrical soundtracks. It’s no wonder David Lean kept hiring him when you consider that Lean made some truly stunning, sweeping, theatrical films. They were two peas in a pod. “Lawrence of Arabia” must have been like a dream come true for them, the perfect chance for them both to show off their mad skills. This music is best experienced in context, when you watch the full length version of the film, in a darkened room as it starts off with a perfectly blank screen. Just five minutes with you, the music and the darkness. Four is a crowd.


12. “Take my Breath Away” from “Top Gun” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO30ULfOnjE)

Once in high school someone asked me to name the single most eighties movie ever to come out of the eighties. I thought for a minute and then said, “Top Gun”. Nobody had any rebuttal for this. This song is a good demonstration of that. It is pure, unadulterated eighties cheese from Berlin, and I mean that in only the best way. Listening to that dulcet synth-bass sound and the gentle, wet rattle of the high hats I can almost feel the ocean spray on my face at sunset as I relax in the dusky tropics. (I can’t control what image it puts into my head, all right?! Cut me some slack!) This song was co-written by the great Giorgio Moroder—just like another classic piece of eighties cheese still to come.


11. “Canyon Voices” from “Canyon Dreams” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbzqiTfTYRw)

Tangerine Dream, as you may remember, did “Risky Business” and the theatrical version of “Legend” (as well as countless non-soundtrack classics but let’s not get into that). This is from one of their lesser known efforts—some documentary about canyons. I used to own the soundtrack; I have, to date, never actually seen the film. This melody has haunted me for years and never once left my memory. It’s lovely and almost sad in a way, and almost enigmatic, and I’ve never heard anything like it before or since.


10. The theme from “Batman” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAK9TGu7RWE)

I don’t know how many of you know what it was like to experience this film on the silver screen way back in the summer of ’89. Those who haven’t done so haven’t really gotten the full experience; it’s no use describing it in text. This is one of those movies designed specifically for the theatrical experience and which can hardly be enjoyed to its fullest in any other way. But the gothic dreaminess works in any format. It just…oozes classic noir ambience.


9. “Execution” from “The Killing Fields” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGPiUGuWsA0)

Another case of my having heard the soundtrack without having seen the film. Hey, it’s permitted. I’m a humungous Mike Oldfield fan. Like I couldn’t even tell you. To be honest I don’t really know what this film is even *about*. Something to do with war. But I still recognize the single most unsettling piece of music ever recorded when I hear it. Leave it up to the man himself to write the best example ever of pretty much anything.


8. The theme song from “The Neverending Story” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXJQOnT0xAM)

This is the other Giorgio Moroder-penned classic I spoke of. Try to imagine the movie without the song. Would it have been the same movie at all? Would it have been a fifth as good? You see what a difference a single small element can make? This song practically *was* my childhood. It is the essence of wonder and escapism.


7. “Strawberry Fields Forever” from “Magical Mystery Tour” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaRmyUrEu4I)

It’s not easy to write a song that is so mellow and relaxed and yet so bittersweet. Ringo also famously does some of the most creative and difficult drumming in history here (his “wild drumming” track, they call it). The introspective lyrics, while they do ramble somewhat, are of the sort that most anyone can identify with, at least at certain points in their life. The song has an aura of a magical fairyland, of pixie dust sparkles, perhaps even more than the previous entry does.


6. “Science Fiction Double Feature” from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFlEIQbmr5o)

Richard O’Brien’s ode to the popcorn flicks of yore, and it comes from a movie that is itself one of the all-time great popcorn flicks. The melody is not only catchy but also somehow…moving??! Here’s a fun game to play: see how times you can spot the song name-dropping film titles in its lyrics. I personally got about eleven although I’m not quite certain of one or two of them. There were really only nine I was confident of and the song might have had as many as fifteen or sixteen in all. Try to guess ’em all! Prove you’re a trivia master!


5. The theme from “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFa1-kciCb4)

I can hardly summon words to do justice to the spectral power of this numinous, otherworldly…thing. You see? I’m speechless. Ennio Morricone touched on something almost eldritch here, but at the same time not at all unpleasant. I…just listen to it already. There’s no point in talking about it.


4. The music from the montage sequence in “Up” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2bk_9T482g)

A throwback to the styles of the entire first century or so of film music, combining all of its beauties and throwing in a few new ones for good measure. I’m not a musicologist but that’s what it sounds like to me anyway.


3. “L’Arena” from “Il Mercenario” and “Kill Bill Vol. 2” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUyNjjQq_rk)

It really is a testament to the talent of Ennio Morricone that two different compositions of his have ended up in the top five. This is the single most stirring piece of music I think I’ve ever heard short of Toscanini’s rendition of the vivace of Beethoven’s seventh.


2. “Anvil of Crom” from the original “Conan the Barbarian” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPURxkrl2aE)

When people describe music as “colorful” they don’t tend to mean it somewhere in the neighborhood of literally but I can almost see colors here—vivid dark bottle green and brown-gold and royal purple. What do I mean by that? Can’t explain—except to emphasize the word VIVID. I *can* tell you that this track is so perfectly composed that I’m certain that even if you did a blind test and played it for people who have never heard it before, have never heard of Conan, and had no idea what was going on, and if you asked them what they reckoned they had just listened to, they would probably say, “I don’t know but I’ll bet that was some kind of sort of sword-and-sorcery deal about a barefoot barbarian.”


1. The score to “Koyaanisqatsi” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7kPMnPaLOo)

To score an entire hour-and-a-half-long film with one continuous piece of music is in itself no mean feat but to do it with a piece this memorable and powerful, well, that’s a horse of a different color. Philip Glass was up to the task: perhaps Glass alone could have done it. After all, this was the same guy who did “Music with Changing Parts”. Without his score the film would not merely have been a different experience, would not merely have been a different film. Without him there could have *been* no “Koyaanisqatsi” at all. Listening to an excerpt there at Youtube is futile. I probably shouldn’t have given the link. With “Koyaanisqatsi” the unique music and the unutterably gorgeous images merge and become one. It’s a single, holistic experience which cannot be chopped up into little pieces and taken out of context, dissected or articulated. It’s on the list—but like the film itself it stands completely on its own.

You really put some time and effort into this... this... this is amazing. Well done, guy.