Top 5

Most Memorable Uses of Pop Music

5.  "Search and Destroy" will be the hardest Wes Anderson ever rocks--in the Life Aquatic, when Bill Murray decides to take his ship back from the pirates

4.  "I Just Stopped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In" or maybe "The Man In Me," both during beautiful, dreamlike sequences in The Big Lebowski

3.  "Long Tall Sally" roars louder than the chopper in Predator; it was the eighties, they easily could have included Van Halen or Judas Priest or something but no--someone had the sense to use mad, mad, Little Richard

2.  "Stuck In the Middle With You" plays while Michael Madsen... plays...  --Reservoir Dogs

1.  "The End" while Kurtz is murdered in Apocalypse Now

Re: Most Memorable Uses of Pop Music

1. Easily, The Knack w/ "My Sharona" at the gas station in Reality Bites.  Completely transporting...  #1 just because I think that scene made that movie.

2. The Doors at the end of Apocalypse Now-- you're right- I agree, and it deserves to be mentioned twice, awesome.  Lays me low every time.   It is absolutely riveting, and plays like a video shot for the song. I'd watch it on mtv.  Mythical marriage of movie and song- period

3. "Bad Moon Rising" -Creedence Clearwater Revival in American Werewolf in London .  It fits on one hand, but funny to play right after the main character bites it.

4. "Let it snow" in Die Hard.  Come on, not only does it play at the end, but the cop hums it while buying twinkies. 

5. 5678's at the cantina in Japan, Kill Bill vol. 1.  Completely left field sticks w/ me.  I thought they were a cute choice.  -also I've run dry on the last pick... what, they were memorable.

Re: Most Memorable Uses of Pop Music

1. For me, it has to be that iconic sequence in Reservoir Dogs when the gang walks in slow motion to "Little Green Bag" - from that point on I was hooked into the movie.

2. I'm showing my age ( as a child of the 80's), but Queen's base line that moves into "FFFFLLLASSSHH, ah ah"  was the coolest intro to any movie (especially one this campy-Flash Gordon)

3. I guess I'm into film intros, but I love Tony Manero strutting down the street to "Stayin Alive"  in Saturday Night Fever.

4. Alice Cooper's "School's Out" playing over the images of the last day of school for junior and high school students in small town 70's Texas in Dazed and Confused.

5. Does "The Time Warp" count from The Rocky Horror Picture Show? I saw images of this sequence on VH1 as a kid and had to wait until high school to finally see the crazy movie that included this weird, wild imagery.  

Re: Most Memorable Uses of Pop Music

Re: Most Memorable Uses of Pop Music

5. Rage Against The Machine - Wake Up - at the end credits for the Matrix ( just sounds so mean )

4. Nancy Sinatra - Bang Bang - Kill Bill v2

3 The Entire AC/DC Library in Maximum Overdrive

2.Louis Armstrong -Wonderful World - Farenheit 9/11

1.Pixies - Wheres My Mind - End of Fight Club

also the music that plays everytime Jim Carey flips in Me Myself & Irene, sounds like Jon Spencer... but I don't think it is.

Re: Most Memorable Uses of Pop Music

How about the most overused pop songs in movies?  There are a lot of them.

One that comes to mind is "Kung Fu Fighting" used in any Asian action movie marketed for the US audience.  Seriously, this trick seems to never get old?

Re: Most Memorable Uses of Pop Music

Song overused within a movie:  "California Dreamin'" in Chungking Express.

There are four songs I really, really like that are overused, and three of them are by James brown.

4.  Payback  ("I don't know karate / but I know crazy")

3.  I Feel Good

2.  Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

and the last song is by Booker T. and the MG's.  One time I was hanging out with Porcupine, and I put on "Green Onions."  Porcupine got this pensive look, and said, "What movie is this in?  Oh... every single movie ever since it was written."  The first instance I can think of is in The Sandlot when they're at the fair.

Re: Most Memorable Uses of Pop Music

Hard to pick out a single song, so I had to go with movies that make memorable use of pop songs - because some movies have two or three memorable sequences involving songs

5. 'Apocalypse Now' - "The End" of course, both used memorably at the beginning and the end, I can't hear that song now without seeing slow-mo helicoptors or blossoming fireballs or water buffalo being slaughtered . . . but also in the same movie, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" always puts that picture of Lawrence Fishburne dancing on the back of the boat and the water skier in my mind -- and "Suzie Q" with the dancing playboy bunnies and the ensuing riot.

4. 'Harold and Maude' - All Cat Stevens, and each one connected to a scene in the movie in my mind. "Don't Be Shy" (the opening 'hanging' sequence), "Trouble" (the ending suicide/hospital/crashing the car over the cliff sequence), and small bits of "On the Road to Find Out", "Miles From Nowhere", "Tea for the Tillerman", "If You Want to Sing Out Sing Out", "Where Do the Children Play" each instantly transport me back to the film.

3. 'Blue Velvet' - that incredibly spooky scene where Dean Stockwell lip-synchs to Roy Orbison's 'In Dreams'

2. 'Goodfellas' - Scorsese probably uses pop music more effectively than any other current director, and, while much has been made of his overuse of 'Gimme Shelter' by the Stones, there are numerous sequences in this movie which have been hard-wired to songs in my mind: the coda to 'Layla' I now cannot hear without seeing bodies tumbling out of a garbage truck, or that wonderful panicky jump cut paranoia scene near the end where Ray Liotta is sure he is being followed by helicoptors all day while he goes about his business where he mixes three or four songs together (Gimme Shelter among them - 'Mannish Boy' by Muddy Waters - others) - or 'Sunshine of Your Love' by Cream as the airport robbery begins to unravel --

1. 'The Graduate' - who can hear "Mrs. Robinson" without seeing Dustin Hoffman in his Alpha Romeo driving those San Franscisco Highways, or hear "Sound of Silence", "April Come She Will" or "Scarborough Fair" and not picture the swimming pool/motel room sequence. 

 Hard to pick just 5 - runners up: 'Born to be Wild' from 'Easy Rider' -- and while technically not 'pop songs' - 'Rhapsody in Blue' will always mean the opening to Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' -- or how about 'Ride of the Valkyries'? How many people picture the helicoptors in 'Apocalypse Now' and how many picture the spa sequence from Fellini's '8&1/2'?

Someone else mentioned 'California Dreaming' from 'Chungking Express' as being 'overused'. Oddly enough, I didn't like the song much, UNTIL it was drummed into my head by that movie, and now I can't hear it without seeing Faye Wong dancing to it.

And I never used to like ABBA until I saw 'Muriel's Wedding'... 

Re: Most Memorable Uses of Pop Music

Very good picks- especially HarryLime & SkyPilot.  Here are a few more:

"The Wind" by Cat Stevens in Rushmore.  When this song played, I understood that Wes Anderson owes a lot to Hal Ashby.  Maybe I was a little slow on the uptake, I wasn't sure what to make of the movie until then.

"Once I Was" by Tim Buckley, along with several other great songs, in Asby's "Coming Home".

"TB Sheets" in Scorsese's "Bringing Out The Dead".

"American Girl" by Tom Petty in "Silence of the Lambs".  The movie kid of ruined that song for me.

 "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" in "The Deer Hunter".  I don't really like the song, but it works so well in the movie.

Re: Most Memorable Uses of Pop Music

Forgot about Coming Home and Deerhunter, both great sequences. Reminds me of another one:

"Imagine" from the final reunion scene in "The Killing Fields"

and anyone else get a sudden revitalization of interest in early Elton John after 'Almost Famous' - especially 'Tiny Dancer' and the bus scene.