Music Therapy column: Films with amazing soundtracks

Michael Taylor and Neil Summers have their own Music Therapy show on Tameside Radio on Sundays from 9pm to 11pm, and they have their own column in the Tameside Reporter. Here's their latest offering...

No gigs, no clubs, no ambient music playing in bars and restaurants, no long journeys to lose yourself in a moment, or a commute into work with your favourite tunes pumping through your headphones to lift your spirits at the beginning or the end of a day. 

It’s been quite hard work finding a soundtrack to lockdown life, writes Michael Taylor.

And so we’re very fortunate to have the opportunity to play music to you on the radio. One of the reasons we wanted to do something different is because of all those other things we’ve lost.

I don’t know about you, but apart from the odd walk into the beautiful countryside that surrounds us, the pleasures of life over the last year have been from watching telly. I’ve watched more films, series and documentaries than ever.

I think our ears have become finely tuned to great songs in films more than ever. 

Maybe because we’ve been denied other routes to great music, or that we just want things that twang our emotions at a strange time like this.

Over the last few weeks on our Music Therapy show Neil and I have dropped tracks that we’ve heard on films, and have encouraged listeners to check them out as a result.

Last week I shared the soaring beauty of Minnie Riperton’s Les Fleurs from 1970. 

It occurred to me that it’s power turned my head when it was used to incredible effect at the end of the quirky horror film Us.

Last month, Neil put us on to an incredible British film called Muscle, directed by Gerard Johnson, with the music by his brother Matt from the band The The. 

Part of the soundtrack is this brilliant atmospheric song called I Want 2 B U which has been released this year. 

It’s got a very strong feel of Matt’s amazing signature tune This is The Day from 1983, which we both really love.

I was reminded recently that it was 35 years since the film Pretty in Pink made its debut in cinemas. 

It’s a great story, love across the class divide in an American High School. But the thing that stands out for me, still, is the amazing soundtrack. The Smiths, new Order, INXS, Suzanne Vega and OMD.

But what’s incredible about the link between music and film is that the title track came first. 

Pretty in Pink by British band the Psychedelic Furs was a massive hit on college radio in America in the early 80s. Film producer John Hughes then wrote the film to fit around it, which is odd, because the story in the song actually bears no relation to the plot of the film, apart from the fact that ultimately Mollie Ringwald looked pretty in pink in her prom dress.

Possibly the best ‘80s soundtrack on any TV series I’ve seen has been the Deutschland series about the crazy times of the Cold War and the slow destruction of communism in East Germany.

The first series set in 1983 was all David Bowie’s Modern Love, New Order’s Blue Monday and Nena with her 99 Red Balloons. 

The new series takes us up to 1989 which wasn’t just the year the wall came down, but was also an amazing time for music. Putting the two together is incredibly potent blend, especially as I’m told there’s a fantastic version of REM’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) to look forward to. Which might just be a song for our times.

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