Mezz Music Monday: Sunday Oscar Awards Edition

The Oscars are tonight, and after the debacle of whether all of the Best Original Song nominees would perform, it got me thinking about songs in the movies. I went down a YouTube wormhole of Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow”, Gene Kelly dancing and “Singin’ in the Rain”, and Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova performing “Falling Slowly” in Once, Tom Cruise dancing to Bob Seger, “Eye of the Tiger” from Rocky III, and every Disney movie ever. I haven’t even seen all of those movies those songs are in. Risky Business and Rocky III have been parodied to death and become cultural touchstones. With Once, “Falling Slowly” transcended the tiny movie from whence it came, and became one of the most iconic movie songs of all time.

It seems nowadays, songs on movie soundtracks are really just on the soundtrack and not in the movie. That it’s just a way to make an extra buck from whatever soundtracks make nowadays, an easy promotional tool, or a way to get an Oscar nomination, especially for a film that probably would not have earned one otherwise.

But, films are missing a trick. Those songs and scenes stay with us long after we see the movie. They are a highlight of awards show montages year after year. We can sing an entire song with other people, unlike with quoting dialogue where sometime we cannot get past the one line, especially when trying to quote movies with friends.

Those songs make us feel as the characters did. We feel their joy and their pain, and their triumphs and their heartbreaks. They make us feel warm, even the saddest of songs, because we think of the wonderful movies they were a part of.

So, to screenwriters, directors, and movie supervisors, the songs should not be an afterthought. Use them in your movies, because if used to maximum effect, we will be singing and dancing to them for the rest of time.

Listen to our “Songs from the Movies” playlist

Written by Kerry Archbold