Top 5 Songs I Discovered Through Movies

It's been too long since I blogged about...anything...and I still can't come up with any interested insights or anecdotes (you wouldn't believe how many tries it took before I even came up with a word that spell-check would identify as me TRYING to spell "anecdote"...at one time they thought I meant "candidate"). So I started to write a thing on the addiction of watching LOST and 24, but that'll take a bit longer, so I was like "well, there's GOTTA be a top 5 I can do." So I thought and thought about different kinds of music and movies and stuff, and then I was like...wait, a lot of my favorite songs are in movies! So in order to clarify, I looked through all the songs in iTunes that I first discovered in some movie I saw, and then put them in order of least to greatest. This is purely judging the song, not the movie, or even how well they fit into the movie.

Links will take you to 30-second clips at AllMusic.com that have the sound quality of a big pile of dookie, but you'll get the idea.

HONORABLE MENTION - "Hold Tight" (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich; featured in Death Proof)
I'm completely in love with this song since I saw "Death Proof" on Friday night (part of GRINDHOUSE, which'll have a review super-quick). It gets honorable mention 'cause it's been in my life for...three days, so there's no telling the staying power, but I've been playing it pretty consistently since then.
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, & Tich formed in 1964, and in their five-year career made pretty big names for themselves in the United Kingdom, which for that time would have been pretty impressive (this was the time of the BEATLES, man). Besides this, they also hit the top ten with six other songs, and they topped it with "Legend of Xanadu."
This song is mind-numbingly great, dirty in a just-subtle-enough kinda way (I didn't realize why iTunes labeled it "Explicit" until I looked up the lyrics), and like any great early-British-Invasion rock song, it gets in, does some damage, and gets out of there fast. It's a quick, easy listen.

5. "Most of the Time" (Bob Dylan, featured in the movie High Fidelity)
Part of the reason this is included here is because it comes in at such a great part of the movie, how can I not fall in love with it? But the song does stand on its own, and as much as mopey emo kids will say Bright Eyes or some crap "speaks to their soul" when some chick or dude broke their heart, you will not and cannot find a better broken heart song than this. It's all denial, and it's all the kind of pep-talk each one of us has given ourselves when that time comes (or maybe it's just a guy thing...I dunno, maybe girls just listen to that one special song over and over until they get sick of it or something), and you swear it's all behind you...most of the time. What a great song.

4. TIE "Melody of the Fallen Tree" (Windsor for the Derby) and "Ceremony" (New Order); [featured in the movie Marie Antoinette]
This is, like, my favorite soundtrack in the world right now. I hate ties in Top 5's. Hate them. But I had to go with both of these, because they're impossibly good and I couldn't pick and I didn't wanna do a list with more than one from the same soundtrack. I know almost nothing about either band, but I cannot stop listening to either song.
"Melody of the Fallen Tree" trades places with Iron & Wine's "The Trapeze Swinger" when I need to calm myself down before bedtime. This is a tad more upbeat, but it's still totally soothing, even when it goes into its second half of pure instrumental (in fact, I'd say especially when it goes there). I don't have a frickin' clue what the song means, but it's one of those (not unlike The Shins' "New Slang") in which the lyrics are really just part of the music. I'm sure this is a great listen if you're stoned.
As for "Ceremony," it was one of the first songs I discovered from Marie Antoinette (it was in the trailer), but it's really this song that captures the mood of the movie for me. It's a wonderful song, with all the energy, enthusiasm, and production values you'd want from 80s music, and one of very, very few reasons I will never completely write off that decade.

3. "Combination of the Two" (Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company; featured in the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
This song is absolutely insane, which I guess would be required to open a movie like Fear and Loathing. In the opening speech on the live track for this, some guy in the band (I presume Big Brother) says the song's about San Francisco, which means they're all pretty much on acid during the whole thing, but I'm sure somehow it makes sense. Try to stop me from blasting this song at, really, ANY point during the summer. This was one of the themes of the summer of '05.

2. "A Quick One, While He's Away" (The Who, featured in the movie Rushmore)
If any one person has assembled soundtracks that are aimed specifically at me, it's Wes Anderson. Both Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums soundtracks are perfect in every single way. Of course, I knew most of the songs already, but THIS...this underheard, underappreciated, completely fantastic Who song I'd never heard before and have been listening to since. It's really excessively long and feels completely disjointed, not unlike every great epic Who song, but this one even moreso. It really sounds like they just made it all up right there on the spot, and I believe that because The Who were just that talented.
The song's basically...and you can tell this from the title, which is fantastic, about a girl whose husband or boyfriend or something...love of her life basically, who leaves for whatever reason, and while she's away she cheats on him with (of all people) a train conductor, and the song is alternatingly from the perspective of the town she lives in, the train conductor, the man trying to get home, the girl herself, and the man again. It's frickin' brilliant.

1. "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" (Elton John; featured in the movie Almost Famous)
"Although the showy "Tiny Dancer" scene got all the attention in Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical movie Almost Famous, a later, quieter scene between Patrick Fugit and Kate Hudson uses "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" to devastating effect." - AllMusic
This was another one of my summer '05 songs. There's a line...in this movie, actually, where Sapphire is talking about this new batch of groupies that joined the tour, and she said "They don't even know what it is to be a fan. Y'know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts." I love this song so much that it hurts. It really does. This song is impossibly great, and I point to it every single time I hear crap for thinking Elton John is brilliant. Because he is, and there are a hundred other songs that could prove it, but this is the one that does it for me. Argh. I'm listening to it right now, and it's killing me.