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The Needle and the Lens

Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock 'n' Roll to Synthwave

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

How the creative use of pop music in film—think Saturday Night Fever or Apocalypse Now—has shaped and shifted music history since the 1960s

Quick: What movie do you think of when you hear "The Sounds of Silence"? Better yet, what song comes to mind when you think of The Graduate? The link between film and song endures as more than a memory, Nate Patrin suggests with this wide-ranging and energetic book. It is, in fact, a sort of cultural symbiosis that has mutually influenced movies and pop music, a phenomenon Patrin tracks through the past fifty years, revealing the power of music in movies to move the needle in popular culture.

Rock 'n' roll, reggae, R&B, jazz, techno, and hip-hop: each had its moment—or many—as music deployed in movies emerged as a form of interpretive commentary, making way for the legitimization of pop and rock music as art forms worthy of serious consideration. These commentaries run the gamut from comedic irony to cheap-thrills excitement to deeply felt drama, all of which Patrin examines in pairings such as American Graffiti and "Do You Want to Dance?"; Saturday Night Fever and "Disco Inferno"; Apocalypse Now and "The End"; Wayne's World and "Bohemian Rhapsody"; and Jackie Brown and "Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time?".

What gives power to these individual moments, and how have they shaped and shifted music history, recasting source material or even stirring wider interest in previously niche pop genres? As Patrin surveys the scene—musical and cinematic—across the decades, expanding into the deeper origins, wider connections, and echoed histories that come into play, The Needle and the Lens offers a new way of seeing, and hearing, these iconic soundtrack moments.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 22, 2024
      Music critic Patrin (Bring That Beat Back) explores in this enthusiastic survey the “transformative power” of preexisting songs that have been added to films to steer tone, create subtext, or otherwise shape audience experience. Spanning 1964’s Scorpio Rising to 2011’s Drive, Patrin’s study considers so-called “needle drops” for such films as Easy Rider (1969), in which Steppenwolf’s “The Pusher” backgrounds motorcyclists Wyatt and Billy Porter’s freewheeling road trip across America after the two complete a cocaine deal, drawing out the contrast between the “good-natured escapists the see themselves as” and the agents of disorder society assumes them to be. Meanwhile, 1979’s Apocalypse Now opens with the Doors’ “The End,” a semi-absurdist musical choice that ushers in a “sense of ultimate finality, and the fear that comes with facing that oblivion” befitting the film’s Vietnam War backdrop. The song selection also led director Francis Ford Coppola to reorganize the movie’s structure, bringing elements from the end to the beginning. Interweaving director interviews, behind-the-scenes set gossip, and film and music criticism, Patrin unpacks with a fan’s devotion and a scholar’s precision how song and scene interact to become more than the sum of their parts. Lovers of film and music will be delighted with how Patrin brings the two together.

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  • English

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