You CAN "do a movie" if it's FOR the movie
There's a whole spectrum
Last week, I wrote to you about music videos that riff off popular movies.
Last month, Ian Karmel wrote to you about a trend he wished would come back:
I’m here to say…YEAH! And not just rap! There used to be a thing, in the 80s and 90s, where the music video for a movie’s theme song actually featured the actors from the movie. It was so corny, and we should bring it back.
There are a few levels here. As Ian pointed out, the highest level is Rap Song That Is Lyrically About The Movie. For instance, Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West” (1999).
Or Will Smith’s “Men In Black” (1997).
Or Quad City DJ's “Space Jam” (1996).
Pretty self-explanatory.
The next level is Pop Song About the Movie’s Themes, With Movie Characters In The Music Video. This is the funniest level because, unless your movie stars Will Smith, the person in the movie and the person singing the song are not the same person, so the singer just kinda…walks around whilst the actors sit there, in character or sort of in character.
Take Carly Simon’s “Let The River Run,” the theme song from Working Girl (1988). Carly’s on the Staten Island Ferry singing, intercut with clips from the movie, except for one random shot around 30 seconds into the video where Carly is reading the paper with Melanie Griffith and Joan Cusack. So weird! I love it!
This is similar to John Parr’s “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)” from the 1985 film of the same name. Parr sings in the wreckage of the titular restaurant, and also plays at the restaurant when it’s packed with people, intercut with clips from the movie.
But then!! Three minutes into the video, the characters from the movie come to mutely hang out with John Parr while he sings in their faces. It’s incredibly weird and awkward. I can’t get enough.
Two of the best examples come from our modern day pop princesses: Britney and Madonna. Britney’s “(You Drive Me) Crazy” (1999) video mixes in footage of Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier, stars of Drive Me Crazy (1999), but it’s not them in clips from the movie, it’s them making flirty milkshakes at the diner where Britney is serving food and moves.
Pretty sure Hart and Spears were never on set together, but it works.
Madonna, however, certainly interacted with Mike Myers for the “Beautiful Stranger” video, made for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, also in 1999. She grinds on him in the Shaguar.
This video is honestly a masterpiece. Don’t make em like that anymore.
What happened to these?? Can anyone think of an example post-Y2K? Can we blame this on 9/11? Did we lose them because of woke?
What we still get is the lowest tier, Music Video That References The Set Of The Movie, Plus Clips. Like Olivia Rodrigo running around a vaguely District 12 shack and field, plus shots from The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023).
Or Celine singing “My Heart Will Go On” on the prow of the Titanic, plus clips.
Fun fact: for the 25 anniversary of Titanic (1997), they released an all-Celine version of the video. IT IS SO GOOD.
Lady Gaga’s “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick (2022) finds her in airplane hangars and playing the piano on the road…intercut with clips from the movie. It’s good but imagine how much better it would be if she sang it in Tom’s face.
In fairness, she’s only going as far as Berlin went for “Take My Breath Away” from the original, but I wonder if, with those silhouetted pilots, they were trying to imply that the actors were there?
Sometimes you don’t even need clips. Charli XCX’s “Speed Drive” was written for and directly references Barbie (2023), but a Margot Robbie cameo was too far.
Billie Eilish’s video for “What Was I Made For?” from the same film has a Barbie.
Both of these are nice, but nowhere near the spectacle of “Lady Marmalade” for Moulin Rouge! (2001), which didn’t have clips or actors from the movie, but did have Missy Elliot saying “ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Moulin Rouge!” (she also helped produce the track).
Someone, anyone, please, bring back the tailor-made movie tie-in music video in all its bizarro glory.
That’s about all I have to say on the subject, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out two humorous outliers in the song/movie/music video conversation. First is Girls Just Want To Have Fun (1985), a movie based on the song of the same name.
Except not. Both the title and tagline are lifted from the song, which the studio bought the rights to…but they didn’t get the rights to the popular version of the song, released by Cyndi Lauper two years prior. Also, the plot has nothing to do with the lyrics except that girls do be wanting fun. I’m noting this because someone once seriously tried to convince me the song was written for the movie because “they line up perfectly,” and for the record, it wasn’t, and they don’t.
The second is Falco’s 1985 hit “Rock Me Amadeus,” which was inspired by the film Amadeus (1984). Not written for the movie. Not even on the soundtrack of the movie. Just inspired by it. This is, to my knowledge, the only time this has happened? Sure, there are Taylor Swift songs inspired by rom-coms and Stevie Nicks has two entire albums inspired by Twilight, but has there ever been another hit stand-alone single with the name of a movie in the title just because the songwriter liked the movie?
Mozart could never
Lizzie
PS - something educational
