What was that song in the film?

Sometimes we meet a song through an international film or television show. It is a fleeting introduction, as only a few seconds of music usually play during a scene. The industry name for this is needle drops, separate from the score specially composed for that film. A few rightly timed drops can have lasting impact.

That is how some of us really noticed ‘Sympathy For the Devil’ by the Rolling Stones. It heralded John Goodman’s rollicking cameo as a drug dealer in the film Flight, and accompanied Denzel Washington’s swag walk out of a hotel room dressed in suit, aviators and a bandaged wound on the forehead.

Many were curious about a tune in 'The Devil Wears Prada' during a scene in Central Park, when Anne Hathaway’s character, complaining about her crumbling personal life, is told, “Let me know when it goes entirely up in smoke. Means it’s time for a promotion.” That song was 'Crazy by Seal'.


Television epics like 'The Sopranos' and 'Mad Men', which ran for years, were oceans filled with musical treasures and exotica, thanks to which we heard numbers like ‘Living on a Thin Line’ by the Kinks and ‘Shahdoroba’ by Roy Orbison, to name just two. You might not have liked every song but it made an impression or at least made scenes impactful. And that is the idea behind most needle drops.

Deciding what song goes where and for how long is a collaborative process between the feature’s music editor/ supervisor, director and sometimes the producer and actors as well. The capo di tutti capi of the Sopranos set, director David Chase, had a say in selecting almost all of the 600-plus songs used on the show. Likewise with Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, who knew from day one the nearly 300 songs that would underline the show.

Chase also consulted Steven van Zandt, who acted in 'The Sopranos' and is a member of Bruce Springsteen’s band in real life. Still, no song could be used without its creator’s permission. When the band Journey was approached for consent for their Don’t Stop Believin’, Steve Perry wanted to know every detail.

In the recent 'Deadpool' film, he hopped into a cab that had ‘Mera Joota hai Japani’ playing in the background.

“I told them, ‘Unless I know what happens — and I will swear to secrecy — I can’t in good conscience feel good about its use’,” Perry said in an interview. The song was ultimately used in the show’s much debated climax.

The more distinctive a director, the more esoteric his music choice, and the harder the job of his music supervisor. Mary Ramos, who worked with Quentin Tarantino for about two decades, once said, “Over the years, I’ve had to sort of be a detective.” She spoke of hunting tunes from unreleased music and obscure Japanese TV shows. For one bit in 'Django Unchained', Ramos and her team called the late rapper Tupac Shakur’s people, trawled through unreleased material and mixed it with gunshots and dialogue.

At times showbiz folk look eastward. Spike Lee started and ended his bank heist thriller 'Inside Man' with ‘Chhaiya Chhaiya’. More recently, 'Deadpool' hopped into a cab in which ‘Mera Joota hai Japani’ played. And a bridge, however transient, was built across movie cultures. All with a few drops.