Soundtrack songs
Mark shares some of his favourite songs from musicals to jukebox soundtracks, and features An American Werewolf in London which never even had a soundtrack album.
Feed the Birds from Mary Poppins
In my opinion the best song ever written directly for a screen musical
"Mary Poppins for me is practically perfect in every way. I first saw it as a child and have subsequently inflicted it on my own offspring... I own a very battered copy of the soundtrack which was given to me as a Christmas present many decades ago. The song that still reduces me to tears every time is Feed the Birds. A timeless composition by the Sherman brothers which remains a masterclass in screen song-writing."
How Does It Feel from Slade in Flame
The main theme of my favourite pop musical of all time
"Sneered at by critics when it first opened in the mid ‘70s, [it] has since gone on to be acclaimed as arguably the definitive British rock movie of the decade. wanted to lift the lid on pop stardom. The result was a movie the bleakness and toughness of which shocked and alienated the band’s core teeny bop audience. The fans rejected it but I loved it and bought the soundtrack album the day after I saw the movie."
Try A Little Tenderness from The Commitments
If you go out of sync you start not to believe it and the moment you don’t believe it, everything is lostAlan Parker on shooting live with actor Andrew Strong
"Director of films as diverse as Bugsy Malone, Fame, Evita... [Alan] Parker knows more about how to use music in movies than anyone. The Commitments looks like it’s music that’s recorded live [and] feels like a film that’s made by somebody who loves those songs."
Blue Moon from An American Werewolf in London
The use of pop music by somebody who seemed to be every bit as pop literate as the audience
"The thing I remember about seeing that film was that everyone said, ‘It’s great because they use things like .’ So it’s pop literate and the fact that it finishes with a version of Blue Moon [by ] which is really snappy, funny and weird because it comes immediately after this terribly tragic sequence at the very end of the film."
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