The All-Conquering, Weepy Movie Ballad: Gone Forever?
Have the movies gotten too hip with the indie rock and hip-hop and the disco? The AP says yes, as it laments the loss of “the kind of movie theme song that no longer exists.” You know…”My Heart Will Go On,” the tortuous oeuvre of Diane Warren, and so on. The “big and poignant,” melodramatic MOR pop songs that were “huge radio hits” as well as Oscar winners. But can the era of the inescapable movie tie-in ballad really be over after so many decades?
But in the past few years, filmmakers like Cameron Crowe and Wes Anderson (following the example set by directors like Martin Scorsese) have been more likely to choose pre-existing songs to punctuate a moment or create a certain mood. Then those soundtracks — like the ones for Crowe’s “Vanilla Sky,” Anderson’s “Rushmore” or Zach Braff’s “Garden State” — go on to be popular themselves.
It seems there’s just no room on the pop charts any more for an “Up Where We Belong” (from “An Officer and a Gentleman”) or a “Take My Breath Away” (from “Top Gun”). Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” rap from the 2002 film “8 Mile” is the rare recent Oscar winner that’s also had radio success — as catchy as “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” was from 2005’s “Hustle & Flow,” it wasn’t exactly radio-friendly.
Oh? All those radio-friendly “pimps” might disagree. But Celinian moments do seem in short supply these days. (Or maybe I’ve just blanked out the most recent example of this kind of crossover smash.) So why did they go away, if they did? Radio DJ Kid Kelly’s argument about there being “so much fragmentation” when it comes to radio formatting seems sensible enough, as it’s doubtful America’s lost its incurable weakness for this particular brand of cornball tearjerking, but rather that the virus has fewer places (i.e. the “adult contemporary stations, where many of these movie themes traditionally have been popular”) to take root and spread out into popular culture. But it’s also dangerous to count out the monster ballad–and the article is definitely talking about a very specific kind of prom-baiting, slow-dancing balladry whether it always acknowledges it or not–especially given how much corn still makes it to No. 1, even in our niche-marketed times. It could always just be mutating into a new and even deadlier form.
