Top 15 Teen Movie Music Moments

While we still haven’t hopped off the Nostalgia Train of the late, great John Hughes, we decided to make a quick list of the great music moments in teen movies. John Hughes took his soundtracks very seriously, as one of his very few post-80s interviews on Sound Opinions attests, and why shouldn’t he?

Teen movies, in general, have great music. I don’t know how that is, but when you think about it, teenagers take music more seriously than any other demographic I can think of, so if you’re making a movie by/for them, it’s gotta have a great soundtrack. Some of the choices may be silly, but, then again, most teen movies are too.

15. Clueless, General Public “Tenderness”, Radiohead “Fake Plastic Trees, Coolio “Rollin With The Homies”, Jill Sobule “Supermodel”

A fitting introduction to all modern teen movies. Writer/Producer/Director Amy Heckerling, a veteran of the Brat Pack era herself, re-imagines Jane Austin’s Emma as a match-making high school gal cavorting around to a killer soundtrack that featuring a number of re-made 80s songs. The flick revived the late Teen Movie Factory which began churning out a ton high school comedies, as well as plenty of classicd-turned-teen drama… like She’s All That (My Fair Lady), Cruel Intentions (Les Liaisons Dangereuses), O (Othello), and 10 Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Schrew).

14. Weird Science, Oingo Boingo, “Weird Science” & General Public “Tenderness”

13. Risky Business - Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight”

12. Rushmore - “Making Time”

Wes Anderson’s much-copied montage of Max Fisher’s busy extracurricular schedule set to Brit-invasion fuzz.

11. Romeo + Juliet, Garbage “#1 Crush” or Radiohead “Talk Show Host” or Des’eree(?) “Kissing you”

10. Pretty in Pink, Psychedlic Furrs “Pretty in Pink”

9. Sixteen Candles (A: Altered Images ..happy birthday, my favorite bday track ever!)

8. Valley Girl, Eddy Grant, “Electric Avenue”

Awww, Nick Cage used to be cute! This soundtrack kills, and has both Modern English’s “Melt With You” and Men at Work’s “Who Can it be Now?” but Araceli pointed out that the soundtrack LACKS this classic (which I can’t find the full clip of).

7. Some Kind of Wonderful, Lick The Tins, “Can’t Help Falling in Love”

This appeared earlier as Araceli’s favorite John Hughes moment, and I’d never seen the movie but, oh man, it IS a great song. Love the tin whistle. Skinny Eric Stoltz and a tin whistle is all you need.

6. Dazed and Confused, “Free Ride”

Honestly there are TONS of songs to choose from on this one… a great classic rock soundtrack. “Free Ride” narrowly beat out the pool hall entrance scene to Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane”.

5. Fast Times at Ridgemont High: The Cars, “Moving in Stereo”

Hilariously, the actual scene isn’t on YouTube (probably because of the nudity), but the scene has obviously reached legendary status, as you get the idea here.

4. Donnie Darko, Tears for Fears “Head Over Heels”

Donnie Darko is either adored or maligned depending on the crowds you sit with at lunch. In this clip we’re introduced to nearly all the characters in the film while touching on some major plot points and motifs in the process. Richard Kelly’s film style seems to give a nod to John Hughes, Baz Lurhman and David Lynch — all of whom have a healthy fascination with teen drama. Did you catch Phantom Planet singer Alex Greenwald doing a line of coke with a young Seth Rogan? Gotta love it.

3. The Breakfast Club: Simple Minds, “Don’t You Forget about Me”

Because some dope has disabled embedding, you can check out the ending here. Simple Minds were the centerpiece of this teenage testament to high school cliques — the song made the Judd Nelson still-frame ending iconic (and lovably cheezy), but it’s also bookended by an instrumental version that opened up the movie with Anthony Michael Hall’s voice over.

2. American Graffiti - “Rock Around The Clock”

1. Say Anything, Peter Gabriel “Your Eyes”

As I’ve been hunting for all these clips on Youtube, I’ve realized two things. 1: The more popular a scene is the LESS likely the actual clip will be on YouTube, and 2: Because it is popular, there are going to be TONS of crap tributes, iMovie photo clips, and terribly unimpressive/unfunny/poorly-executed re-creations. All in all… posters of YouTube, you’re terrible. Go to hell….

-A: Unbeknownst to me “Your Eyes” was the “it” track on this album, but Depeche Mode’s “Stripped” is by far the real stand out song.

Don’t You Forget About Me: Lille’s Favorite John Hughes Moment(s)

I wrote this blog entry six years ago. In it, I talked about my life 11 years ago, and how it paralleled Andie and Blaine’s in “Pretty in Pink” because my boyfriend then was really rich and there really seemed to be this class divide between him and his friends, and me and my friends. This entry, made before Youtube, references every scene I could relate to.

Pretty in Pink=My Life 5 Years Ago

So I was watching Pretty in Pink with Mark last night and I realized that it was the story of my life five years ago! (I then googled his name and it turns out some other girl believed my ex was also Blaine to her Andie! I am not alone!)

He does pithily look and act like Blaine, in fairness.

It was also a coinkidink that I was playing “Rumble Breath Man” right before we started watching and I was telling Mark how most of my songs were written with CTCFS (what we called said Ex) in mind. Proof:

#1 The Party:

The party where they first go to where everyone was stoned and drunk and Andie felt totally awkward? That was me! I was so scared to meet his coño friends because I didn’t have the right clothes, the right address, the right look…one of his drunk friends even told me, “Oh, you finally broke through our group…” or some shit like that.

God. As if it was everyone’s lifelong dream to sit on the coño bench.

#2 Duckie:

Ed was my Duckie! My friends used to diss CTCFS to his face all the time (”Make pa-share the ice cream? Pa-share?! PA-SHARE?!? Can you make pa-tuhog your eye?!? Bwahahaha!!” or “Lille! You’re ditching us to hang with Mr. flavor of the month?”)

The same from Ducky: “Blaine? That’s not a name, that’s a major appliance.”

Ed even wrote CTCFS a break-up letter (separate from mine!), saying “you are a spineless fuck…” or words to that effect. Hee!

#3 Le Freak C’est Moi!

Tapos the part where Andie freaks out on him in the school hall? I totally wish I had done that to him instead of freaking out to my friends outside the 7-11 in Malate right after a reading in Caribana. “If somebody doesn’t believe in me, I can’t believe in them.” Whoo!!!

#4 “I don’t want you to take me home!”

The part where Andie doesn’t want Blaine to see where she lived kills me. The first time CTCFS picked me up he said, “I’ve never been anywhere like this before.” (This=Skwaking). On one date, he picked me up first then went back to Forbes (where he lived) to pick up his friend! Sheeyet. I guess cause he didn’t want his friend to see where I lived. And of course in the end, his car stereo was stolen right outside our house in Baguio. But that house was in a really nice area, so that’s pretty ironic. Hee.

Man, young love. It is hilarious and cute now, but hurt like hell when it was happening. So watching that movie was like reliving my past. I hate the ending though; I forgot that Blaine and Andie ended up together. I would never have let that happen. But read what Jon Cryer has to say about the ending.

Seriously? All I wanted was to live in a bubble with him. Aww!

Perfect Artist-to-Movie Matchups

Digitally-projected faces gleam through their cyborg-like helmets — uniforms, aglow in LED, look half-nostalgic and half-futuristic. They exist in a space that at times feels carnal, brutish, but thoroughly modern.

I am, of course, talking both about Daft Punk and the movie Tron.

And… purely by coincidence, Daft Punk is doing the score for the Disney sequel Tron: Legacy.

If you like the trailer or not, you HAVE to enjoy that stereo sound, and the slithering imposing symphonic techno that comes into the mix at about the 2-minute mark:

Tron Legacy Trailer from Volker Ragnarok on Vimeo.

So… now I ask.  What other music/movie pairings were so brilliant you’re mad you didn’t think about them first.  Here’s a few other ones I like:

• Blow-Up and The Yardbirds (Herbie Hancock did the score but who better to navigate through swinging 60’s hipsters than the ‘Birds?)

• The Graduate and Simon & Garfunkel (duh)

• Punk Drunk Love and Jon Brion (could easily have been Magnolia - Aimee Man, but this P.T. Anderson absurdist romantic comedy deserved an equally loopy score.)

So. Those are a few of mine.  What are yours?