Magical Musical Tour: Rock and Pop in Film Soundtracks

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA, Oct 22, 2015 - Performing Arts - 216 pages

The popular music industry has become completely interlinked with the film industry. The majority of mainstream films come with ready-attached songs that may or may not appear in the film but nevertheless will be used for publicity purposes and appear on a soundtrack album. In many cases, popular music in films has made for some of the most striking moments in films and the most dramatic aesthetic action in cinema, like Ben relaxing in the pool to Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence' in The Graduate (1967), and the potter's wheel sequence with the Righteous Brothers' 'Unchained Melody' in Ghost (1990). Yet, to date, there have only been patchy attempts to deal with popular music's relationship with film. Indeed, it is startling that there is so little written on subject that is so popular as a consumer item and thus has a significant cultural profile.

Magical Musical Tour is the first sustained and focused survey to engage the intersection of the two on both an aesthetic and industrial level. The chapters are historically-inspired reviews, discussing many films and musicians, while others will be more concentrated and detailed case studies of single films. Including an accompanying website and a timeline giving a useful snapshot around which readers can orient the book, Kevin Donnelly explores the history of the intimate bond between film and music, from the upheaval that rock'n'roll caused in the mid-1950s to the more technical aspects regarding 'tracking' and 'scoring'.

 

Contents

1 Introduction
1
A Hard Days Night and Help
19
3 The Psychedelic Screen
31
4 Obscured by Pink Floyd
45
Rockumentary Films
63
Singing Across 110th Street
79
Bowies Failed Film Soundtrack
93
8 Cohabitation? The Resurgent Classical Film Score and Songs in the Batman Films
105
Rock Musicians Become Film Composers
121
1980s and 1990s Hip Song Compilation Films
137
Gangsta Rap and Bad Lieutenant
153
Notes
163
Bibliography
186
Index
194
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About the author (2015)

K.J.Donnelly is a Reader in Film at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the author of Occult Aesthetics: Synchronization in Sound Film (2013), British Film Music and Film Musicals (2007), The Spectre of Sound (2005) and Pop Music in British Cinema (2001); and editor of Film Music: Critical Approaches (2001) and co-editor (with Phil Hayward) of Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuning to the Future (2012).

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