Ten Songs Made Memorable by Their Inclusion in a Movie

Over the past few decades, there has existed an unmistakable shift in the way that movies engage songs. For the first forty or so years of sound movie history songs featured in films were either written directly for the movie or, if the songs pre-existed, they were worked into musicals. And then there was a shift toward using popular songs to overlay montage as a shortcut to plot development. Usually, these things are eminently forgettable, but every once in a while a filmmaker uses a song to such incredible effect that it becomes impossible to hear the song without associating it with the movie. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, obviously. To an extent it serves to rob one's imagination. On the other hand, often a song you really never cared for becomes one that you actually turn up when it appears on your radio.

Then He Kissed Me. The Crystals. Goodfellas.

Many movie fans prefer to single out the use of the piano coda of Eric Clapton's Layla as the defining musical moment from Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. But let's face it, the single greatest sequence in that entire movie that has a musical element to it isn't the revelation of body after body as the Robert DeNiro character struggles desperately to keep all the Lufthansa loot to himself, it's the magnificent traveling shot that follows Henry Hill from a nobody to a somebody beneath the strains of The Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me." It's a great song anyway, but Scorsese now owns all rights to it. The staccato beat is in perfect juxtaposition to the smooth, gliding camera moves that take us from the street and place us into a seat in a nightclub. The lyrical content is also used to perfectly counterpoint how Karen sells her soul.

Head Over Heels. Tears for Fears. Donnie Darko.