If it seems like every other CoS post lately is about a film score, it’s only because Alex Young dictated that if Kanye West could only appear in half of the site’s posts, than the other half must feature news about film scores. Luckily, there is plenty of news to go around on the subject. Some of the news was even 20 years old, like the Eddie Van Halen’s score for The Wild Life. But Tron 2 leads a pack of recent or upcoming films to feature original scores from popular musical figures, ranging from the biggest band in the world to some of the most respected knob turners.
This mingling of popular music and film has a long history, with artists of all sizes and calibers taking on the challenge. Take someone like Hans Zimmer, who in the seventies worked with The Buggles, only to leave pop music all together and flourish in film work. Or take people like Yann Tierson or Angelo Badalamenti, who have taken memorable film work in Amelie and the David Lynch filmography respectively and become pop icons because of it. But for many artists, film scoring is a mere flirtation with another world, and with it comes varying degrees of success and fulfillment. So, we thought a brief history was in order, covering pop music’s relationship with motion pictures. Enjoy!