The popular music industry has become completely interlinked with the film industry. The majority of mainstream films come with ready-attached songs that may or may not appear in the film but nevertheless will be used for publicity purposes and appear on a soundtrack album. In many cases, popular music in films has made for some of the most striking moments in films and the most dramatic aesthetic action in cinema, like Ben relaxing in the pool to Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence' inThe Graduate(1967), and the potter's wheel sequence with the Righteous Brothers' 'Unchained Melody' inGhost(1990). Yet, to date, there have only been patchy attempts to deal with popular music's relationship with film. Indeed, it is startling that there is so little written on subject that is so popular as a consumer item and thus has a significant cultural profile.
Magical Musical Touris the first sustained and focused survey to engage the intersection of the two on both an aesthetic and industrial level. The chapters are historically-inspired reviews, discussing many films and musicians, while others will be more concentrated and detailed case studies of single films. Including an accompanying website and a timeline giving a useful snapshot around which readers can orient the book, Kevin Donnelly explores the history of the intimate bond between film and music, from the upheaval that rock'n'roll caused in the mid-1950s to the more technical aspects regarding 'tracking' and 'scoring'.
K.J.Donnellyis a Reader in Film at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the author of
Occult Aesthetics: Synchronization in Sound Film(2013),
British Film Music and Film Musicals(2007),
The Spectre of Sound(2005) and
Pop Music in British Cinema(2001); and editor of
Film Music: Critical Approaches(2001) and co-editor (with Phil Hayward) of
Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuning to the Future(2012).
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