Tuesday, 28 April 2026

Inspired Use of Music in Movies

Where is everybody?

I can vouch for the fact that at 7am on a Sunday morning, Times Square is deserted.

Radiohead fans will be aware that director Cameron Crowe used the song Everything In Its Right Place at the beginning of the movie Vanilla Sky.

It instantly brings the film to life and is a perfect example of a scene you can't imagine could have been presented better with any other piece of music. 

Maybe not as spine-tingling as the start of Apocalypse Now, when the The End by The Doors rises from the jungle, but it's inspired nonetheless. 

Soon after seeing Vanilla Sky, I was in New York City and staying just off Times Square. I wanted to see if I could replicate the scene where Tom Cruise drives his Ferrari 250 GTO through the deserted streets of midtown Manhattan and stops in the middle of Times Square. 

OK, well I didn't have the Ferrari, but I did have the location. It's an eerie feeling, wandering out onto a stretch of road that is normally packed with people, when there's no one around. The silence is quite surreal.

Shooting that sequence for Vanilla Sky is reputed to have cost the studio $1 million to shut off the surrounding streets for three hours on a Sunday morning.

Transcendent sounds

It's no surprise Cameron Crowe has impeccable taste when it comes to movie music. He was a reporter for Rolling Stone in its classic 1970s heyday, as depicted in his love letter to the era, Almost Famous. His attention to period detail on that movie was painstaking. The incidental music was faultless and contains some unusual choices.

Including:

It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference by Todd Rundgren
Easy To Slip by Little Feat
The Wind by Cat Stevens
Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters by Elton John
Feel Flows by The Beach Boys plays as the credits roll

And, of course, Elton's Tiny Dancer is one of the key moments in the movie. 

Here are some more of my personal favourites - movie scenes where the choice of music was truly inspired. 

Low Rider by War in Cheech & Chong's Up In Smoke

Woody Allen's ode to Manhattan, to the tune of Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue

The final scenes of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are perfectly matched with Beck’s version of the Korgis classic Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime

As someone commented on this clip, "Is there any better “I just got laid” scene in film history?" It's Joseph Gordon-Levitt walking on air to the tune of Daryl Hall & John Oates in the film 500 Days of Summer.

In Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia, the drama builds to an inspired movie moment as the various actors in different locations sing to Aimee Mann's Wise Up

The Three Degrees giving it their best in the nightclub scene in The French Connection

Ewan McGregor's heroin OD and trip to the ER in Trainspotting, to Lou Reed's Perfect Day.

Of course, there's a whole other story to be written about original movie soundtracks. Later.

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