10 Songs Inspired by Films
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Artists are obviously influenced by art. Sometimes inspiration can come from a medium that is not the same as a master’s craft. We’ve seen directors, actors, writers, and more get their knowledge from other filmmakers and thespians, and these discussions have taken place countless times before (and will forever be brought up as long as cinema thrives). Instead, I want to deviate a little bit from this typical conversation by looking at musicians who are also cinephiles. I want to look at ten songs that are inspired by motion pictures.
I’m not talking about songs written for films and/or their soundtracks. Instead, these are songs that either encapsulate the plot of a film that was released before or interpolate a film’s plot for different purposes (perhaps comparing a relationship to a feature film for melodramatic and nostalgic reasons). Additionally, I’m trying to stay away from songs based on films that are adaptations of major properties, like Bond themes for existent/non-existent 007 films, or franchises stemming from novels or comic books. I also guarantee that many other songs didn’t make this list, and this isn’t about finding the ten best songs of this sort. I may do another similar list in the future if this one performs well. I just wanted to find ten examples of varying genres that act as tributes or reinterpretations of beloved, cinematic classics. Let’s get started.
“2HB”-Roxy Music
Short for “To Humphrey Bogart”, glam rockers Roxy Music paid tribute to the noir icon with “2HB”: an homage to Casablanca. With direct quotes from a film that has many (Bryan Ferry and company zero in on Bogie’s “Here’s looking at you, kid”) and allusions to unrequited love that mirror Rick and Ilsa’s in the Best Picture-winning film, Roxy Music’s song is a beloved track that honours its source material nobly.
“Debaser”-Pixies
If Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí sought to shake up the cleanliness of the cinematic medium with game-changing, rule-breaking shocks, Pixies had a similar motive with their combination of pop hooks and abrasive noise. Doolittle single “Debaser” references the notorious silent short Un Chien Andalou both loosely (“Slicing up eyeballs. I want you to know…”, reminiscing on the infamous shot of a woman’s eye being cut through via razorblade) and directly (“I am un chien Andalusian”).
“ForRest Gump”-Frank Ocean
I’m not the biggest fan of Robert Zemeckis’ Best Picture winner Forrest Gump, but I adore singer Frank Ocean’s interpretation of the titular character. Ocean equates a high school romance he had to an athlete by placing himself in character Jenny’s shoes; she is often out of the picture, but in this song, it is Ocean wondering where Gump has run to this time (seemingly out of his life), all while admitting that “Gump” continues to “run my mind, boy”. It’s a gorgeous, heartbreaking ballad from a modern titan.
“Kristen Supine”-SwanS
Swans wear their influences on their sleeves, and lead musician Michael Gira has discussed his many favourite works — from cinematic to literary to artistic — time and time again. On their magnum opus, To Be Kind, the penultimate song is this ten-and-a-half minute track (a short one considering some of Swans’ songs’ lengths) that aims to detail the sensation Gira felt while watching Lars von Trier’s Melancholia and the image of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) basking nude, delirious, and free in the light of the planet above (the very planet that will kill everyone in the near future). Lines like “May planets crash, may God rain ash, to sear our skin, to fold us in… But what comes next?” cement this ideology.
“Oiseaux de proie”-Alcest
The entirety of the Kodama album by French blackgaze outfit Alcest is dedicated to Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, so a majority of the songs here can at least be linked to the animation masterpiece. To focus on one particular song, let’s check out “Oiseaux de proie” which interprets the anime film as an allegory of the anguish that Mother Earth is suffering and its retaliation against humanity; lines (translated from French to English) like “Earth murdered; sick within” and “Preying monsters throbbing with a primitive rage lurking among trees who breathe” incorporate a number of startling images from Princess Mononoke to poetic, political effect.
“パトリシア”-The Pillows
Japanese alt-rock band The Pillows has quite a few songs based on films, and I believe they’d be able to have their own list of ten songs. Alas, I’m picking just one, and for me it was a no brainer because of how much I love the film being represented. “パトリシア”, or “Patricia”, alludes to the character played by Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard’s masterwork Breathless. The band equates the ennui of a relationship to the empty spaces found between Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo’s characters in this avant-garde debut from the French New Wave auteur.
“Red Angel Dragnet”-The Clash
Punk rock titans The Clash hint at Martin Scorsese’s controversial New Hollywood thriller Taxi Driver a few times throughout “Red Angel Dragnet”, with depictions of a crime-ridden New York City and the concerns of how Guardian Angel Frank Melvin was shot and killed in December 1981: the act of vigilantism to try and “cleanse” a city that results in tragedy (Melvin was on an anticrime patrol when gunned down by an officer who mistook him for the same burglar they both were seeking). The song then makes direct references to the film’s antihero Travis Bickle by quoting some of his rants, including “Here is a man who would not take it anymore: a man who stood up against the scum, the filth.”
“The Seventh Seal”-Scott Walker
Scott Walker’s greatest album, Scott 4, opens with this blatant homage to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and there’s no secret that this is what the song is about. Kicking off with the question “Anybody see a knight pass this way? I saw him playing chess with Death yesterday”, the song only progresses alongside the plot to the medieval drama line by line. By its end, not only do we have a summary of Bergman’s film, but we also have Walker’s empathetic look at lives that surrender to mortality and the perils of the world.
“White Heat”-Madonna
While many Madonna videos tip their hats to classic films (with directors like David Fincher’s own cinephile passions working their way into the visuals, like his fondness for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis inspiring the video for “Express Yourself”), the song “White Heat” is as blatant as any Madonna song can get in a similar fashion. It kicks off with an actual sample from Raoul Walsh’s noir film of the same name; Madonna follows suit by channelling the James Cagney character Cody Jarrett by stating that she will pursue her love without taking no for an answer (and staging he profession of devotion as a stickup, gangster style).
“The Wicker Man”-Iron Maiden
Another band that can have their own list of film-referencing songs is British heavy metal behemoth Iron Maiden (a quick shoutout to their television-based song “The Prisoner” which is likely the best of all of their tracks inspired by pop culture). Selecting just one song here, I’ll go with “The Wicker Man” from Brave New World (a reference in its own right to Aldous Huxley’s novel of the same name). Mimicking the pagan rituals at the heart of this horror film, Bruce Dickinson sings “Your time will come”, amongst other damning allusions.
Bonus
Here are a couple of albums that are based entirely on films that are worth your while should you be in the mood:
•Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine’s A Beginner’s Mind, where every song is based on a different film (from Wings of Desire and Night of the Living Dead to The Thing and Return to Oz)
•Pomegranates by Nicolas Jarr (meant to serve as an unofficial soundtrack to Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates)
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.