Songs That Stole the Show

Music in film has a long history. From the earliest
silent films of the late 1800s through the 1920s, music was used to enhance the
images on the screen. By the 1960s, music in film had really come into its own,
especially with the explosion of rock, folk, and pop music. Not only did
instrumental scores still play a central role in film, but also pop-music hits
began to show up in films like The Graduate, Easy Rider, and Midnight
Cowboy, creating memorable soundtracks that echoed or even drove what was
on the radio. In short, songs that made it into hit films became inextricably
connected to and symbolic of the films themselves. This tradition carried over
into the ’70s and picked up major steam in the ’80s all the way to the present.

Some of these songs would, on occasion, become
something larger than the films they played in — or, at the very least, just as
big as the films they appeared in. From the ’60s, “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon and
Garfunkel in The Graduate is perhaps the earliest example. From the
1980s, “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News in Back to the Future
and Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” both landed in the #1 spot on the Billboard
charts.

So, in the spirit of those tunes that either partially or fully grabbed a big portion of the spotlight in films they played in, here are six songs from more recent films that “stole the show.”

“Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” – Risky Business

“Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Bob Seger was featured in 1983’s Risky Business. In this instant teen classic, Tom Cruise’s character, Joel Goodsen, slides across the wooden floor of his home in nothing but an Oxford shirt, socks, and briefs just as the opening piano riff of this song kicks in. With an empty candleholder in hand, 18-year-old Joel lip-syncs along as he dances and struts through the living room with the kind of carefree abandon that only a teenager whose parents have gone away for the weekend can. The song, the moves, and the outfit all worked together perfectly not only to heighten Joel’s ecstatic reaction to being home alone but also to catapult the career of Tom Cruise into the stratosphere. Although “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” had done very well when it was released in 1979, peaking at #28 on the Billboard Hot 100, this scene in Risky Business brought it back to both radio and the Hot 100 for many weeks. In short, there is little doubt that the song and this scene steal the show. With all the elements of a classic ’80s teen comedy, Risky Business might have still been a massive hit without this legendary scene and Seger’s megahit, but there is no denying it would not have been the same without it.

“In Your Eyes” – Say Anything...

The 1989 Cameron Crowe film, Say Anything..., features a Romeo and Juliet moment when broken-hearted Lloyd Dobler, played by John Cusack, serenades his ex-girlfriend, Diane Court, outside her bedroom window by holding up a boom box and blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Cusack’s unflinching, somber stare toward Diane’s window along with his fully extended arms holding the boom box overhead work together to highlight the song’s moving melody and lyrics beautifully. Never has the tender naiveté of teen romance been so poignantly captured in a scene. While any number of ’80s love songs could have been used for this scene, director Cameron Crowe knew no other song but “In Your Eyes” would have the same effect. Boy, was he right. The song and the scene live on all these decades later.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” – Wayne’s World

This next one could easily be a contender for the all-time show-stealer song. When Mike Myers’s character, Wayne, climbs into best friend Garth’s AMC Pacer in the opening scene of 1992’s Wayne’s World, he immediately produces a cassette tape and pops in Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” For the next 3-plus minutes, Wayne, Garth, and their two sidekicks, Alan and Terry, sing along joyously to the legendary rock opera as they move slowly through their sleepy hometown of Aurora, Illinois. The sequence is brilliantly broken up by director Penelope Spheeris when the quartet stops to pick up hungover Phil, who is sitting catatonically on a bus-stop bench on the side of the road. The song is paused during this section as the listless Phil is eventually plopped into the backseat between Alan and Terry and Garth drives on. Brilliantly, the climax of “Bohemian Rhapsody” kicks in as Phil tips backward and forward and sings along to “Let me go! Let me go!” And then the headbanging begins as Brian May and band switch the tempo to straight-ahead 4/4, rocking out with his guitar front and center. It’s a moment of pure teenage bliss and freedom, and the song couldn’t be more perfect. In fact, as Mike Myers recounted in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview, the scene was shown to a bedridden Freddie Mercury before he passed away and before the film was released. As Brian May recalls, Mercury absolutely loved it!

“Misirlou” – Pulp Fiction

Next, “Misirlou” by Dick Dale from 1994’s Pulp Fiction. This 1962 song from the king of surf rock was a big hit when it came out but had largely faded from public consciousness by the 1970s as the California surf craze wound down and classic rock took over. A voracious soundtrack builder, Tarantino had decided to use the song for the opening credits of the film before the script was even written! Tarantino has said many times in interviews that, in the process of conceiving of a film, he will often turn to music first as a means to inspire the tone, direction, and even the characters of a story. As for “Misirlou,” Tarantino told Far Out magazine in a recent interview, “Having ‘Misirlou’ as your opening credits is just so intense it just says, ‘you are watching an epic, you are watching this big old movie just sit back.’ It’s so loud and blaring at you, a gauntlet is thrown down that the movie has to live up to.” A gauntlet, indeed, as not only did “Misirlou” kick off this classic film, but it also kicked off a bit of a revival for Dick Dale’s hit and brought it to an audience that, at the time Pulp Fiction came out, would have had very little to no awareness of this legendary surf hit.

“Tiny Dancer” – Almost Famous

Next up is Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” in the unforgettable bus scene from 2000’s Almost Famous. After a night of hard partying at a fan’s house, the movie’s fictitious band, Stillwater, boards their tour bus with bleary-eyed lead guitarist Russell Hammond barely able to walk. Hammond, played brilliantly by Billy Crudup, got ahold of some very special party favors the night before that saw him jumping from a roof into a backyard pool. As the bus pulls away, the unmistakable piano of “Tiny Dancer” begins. The camera moves from beleaguered band member to band member, sitting quietly, staring ahead as they process the night’s events. Soon, everyone on the bus including young, emerging rock journalist William Miller and band “promoter” Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson, are singing along, smiles of pure joy slowly emerging on their faces. The scene climaxes at the falsetto of the chorus’s opening line, and the shock of the rock-star antics and the insanity of the night before fade with the yellow lines of the open road. It’s a show-stealer song and scene and one that will, no doubt, go down in film history as perfectly capturing the wide-eyed innocence and indulgence of early-1970’s rock bands and the fans who idolized them — even the ones that never quite hit the big time.

“Needle in the Hay” – The Royal Tenenbaums

Finally, anyone who has seen even one Wes Anderson film knows immediately his style is cut from a decidedly different cloth. A filmmaker with a vision for merging the interior landscapes of his characters’ emotions and minds with that of the exteriors of their physical lives, Anderson crafts sets that are meticulously detailed to a point of near exhaustion. No surprise, then, that Anderson uses Elliot Smith’s 1995 “Needle in the Hay” during the slow burn of Act III in The Royal Tenenbaums when many of the family secrets and quietly crumbling lives come to light. The near-whisper delivery of Smith’s vocal along with the stripped-down instrumentation of the track perfectly capture Luke Wilson’s character Richie’s silent despondency after learning of stepsister Margot’s many love affairs through a private detective. The headband-wearing tennis ace Richie saunters robotically into the bathroom as the opening guitar plays. Once inside, he begins slowly cutting his long hair and trimming back his thick beard for a complete shaving. But, as Elliot’s haunting voice and lyrics fill the scene and before Richie can make it through his shave, he cuts his wrists and falls slowly to the floor. Thankfully, Richie is saved, but the secrets are out now, and the preternaturally eccentric Tenenbaums can sort of get back to normal — a Wes Anderson normal, that is! The entire scene and the song’s effect are so subtly played we almost forget that we are watching a suicide attempt. And, for that, this song most certainly steals the show.

And there you have it. Six songs that stole the show in movies. There are dozens and dozens more, and we’re sure you have your own list of favorites. Whatever your list looks like, we have no doubts that they are classic show stealers like the ones we have mentioned here. Here’s to more classic songs in film as the summer 2021 movie season heats up!

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