1. Stealers Wheel, "Stuck In The Middle With You," Reservoir Dogs (1992)
In liner notes penned for a double-disc edition of the Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction soundtracks, Quentin Tarantino introduced the notion that sometimes songs become so linked to films that the films essentially own them from there on out. So it's only fitting to begin this list with the perfect example: Prior to Tarantino's 1992 debut film, it was a pleasant bit of Beatles-inspired '70s pop. Now it's the sound of bondage and mutilation and there's no going back.
2. Derek And The Dominos, "Layla," Goodfellas (1990)
From as early as Who's That Knocking At My Door? and Mean Streets, director Martin Scorsese has been a great innovator in using pop music in films—sometimes in an ironic context, other times to bring a certain period or emotion to life. The piano coda to Derek And The Dominos' "Layla" comes at a time of reckoning in Goodfellas: The audacious Lufthansa heist, such a boon to the gangsters who pulled it off, has completely unraveled because the people involved have spent their money conspicuously. As a boy heads off to retrieve a stickball, he discovers the first bodies in a pink Cadillac, and the song starts to play as more bodies are discovered in a pile of garbage and a meat truck. It's the morning Joe Pesci becomes a made man, and the mood is ominous.
3. The Mamas And The Papas, "California Dreamin'," Chungking Express (1994)
One of the world's premier pop stylists and an incorrigible romantic, Wong Kar-wai often draws on a single song to set the tone for his movies, like Nat King Cole's "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás" in In The Mood For Love or the semi-ironic title song of Happy Together. In the second half of Wong's Chungking Express, the charming pixie girl Faye Wong plays The Mamas And The Papas staple wherever she goes, whether blasting it at full volume behind the counter at a street-food vendor or sneaking into a flat owned by Tony Leung, the apple of her eye. Wong's whimsical charms are certainly enough to make viewers fall in love with her, but when Leung plays the song back to her later in the film, it's like her feelings are reciprocated.
4. Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "I Put A Spell On You," Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
When Eszter Balint, the raven-haired object of desire in Jim Jarmusch's minimalist comedy, arrives in New York from Hungary, she carries only a few possessions. The most cherished is her tape recorder, which plays only Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You," a song that clings to her like a security blanket and one that seems to connect her most closely to the alien American landscape. Jarmusch's early films are built around characters whose lives are stifled by confinement and repetition, and the looped Hawkins track becomes a key presence in itself—one that defines not only Balint, but Jarmusch's stark aesthetic.
5. Iggy Pop, "Lust For Life," Trainspotting, (1996)
For the first minute or so, the pounding, hypnotically catchy intro to "Lust For Life" has more to offer Trainspotting than the film has to offer the song. It's a simple opening, with two young heroin addicts fleeing the law in time to the song, which sets the pace and dominates the attention. But as Ewan McGregor's nihilistic opening monologue ramps up, and director Danny Boyle meets the song's drive with his own narrative lunge into the story, the characters and setting take over, and the song becomes mere upbeat background music. Somewhere in the middle, around the time McGregor gets to "Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?" the two merge smoothly into one inseparable piece of art.
6. Iron Butterfly, "In A Gadda Da Vida," Manhunter (1986)
Shortly after he slapped Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" over a perfunctory Miami Vice driving sequence and created pop/TV magic, director Michael Mann tried a similar trick in Manhunter, his adaptation of Thomas Harris' Red Dragon. As lawman William Petersen and serial killer Tom Noonan zero in on each other, Mann cues up the telltale opening chords of one of the heaviest acid rock songs of all time. It's hard to hear that pounding beat and ominous organ now without thinking of Petersen shattering a glass door and crossing the threshold between good and evil, embracing the seemingly eternal darkness of a heavy-metal drum solo.
7. Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra, "Some Velvet Morning," Morvern Callar (2002)
Lynn Ramsay's Morvern Callar follows Scottish supermarket worker Samantha Morton as she deals with her boyfriend's suicide by taking the money and the mixtape he left her and going on an extended holiday. That mixtape—a compilation of chillout techno and twee '60s pop—drives the movie, filling up Morton's Walkman headphones and keeping the world at bay. The sound of "Some Velvet Morning"—"when I'm straight," Hazlewood sings—is simultaneously dreamy and clear, cueing Morton on what she needs to do now that she's been given the gift of release. Her plan? Look straight into that morning sun and just keep going.
8. Night Ranger, "Sister Christian," and Rick Springfield, "Jesse's Girl," Boogie Nights (1997)
P.T. Anderson used at least half a dozen songs so precisely in his epic of porn-industry decay that hearing them now brings the movie right back. ("God Only Knows," anyone? "Mama Told Me (Not To Come)"?) The most memorable musical moment comes in the middle of the "Rahad's Pad" interlude, where a drug deal gone bad is scored to two sublime artifacts of early-'80s kitsch-pop, both of which ramp up the tension. Maybe it's because they're played a little too loud, or maybe it's because the Night Ranger song cuts off at the end of Rahad's "Awesome Mix Tape" and the cassette player auto-reverses over to Rick Springfield, but everything about the songs and the way they're deployed sums up the seedy remains of the free-love era. It's like returning to the bachelor apartment of your unmarried ne'er-do-well uncle, circa 1984.
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