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Dear listeners,
Over the weekend, I saw the epic and thoroughly enjoyable “One Battle After Another,” the latest reason I am grateful to be alive while Paul Thomas Anderson is making movies. Anderson is the only filmmaker with enough harebrained chutzpah to successfully adapt Thomas Pynchon (“One Battle” is loosely based on a section of the madcap novelist’s 1990 work “Vineland”), and one of the most consistently compelling directors working today in any genre. I never know what sort of movie Anderson is going to make next; I only know that I will go see it — and that there’s a good chance there will be some awesome music in it.
In honor of “One Battle After Another” (and with no major spoilers, if you haven’t seen it yet), today’s playlist is a collection of some of the best pop songs that appear in Anderson’s movies. You’ll hear a few tear-jerkers from “Magnolia,” a woozy ballad from “Punch-Drunk Love,” and a pair of cool classics from Anderson’s first Pynchon adaptation “Inherent Vice,” among other tracks.
When it comes to soundtracking their movies, some filmmakers seek out obscure, crate-dug rareties that a viewer has probably never heard before. For the most part, Anderson doesn’t work that way. Many of the songs used in his movies are quite familiar, perhaps even a tad overplayed. But by dropping these widely known tunes into unexpected and often irreverent contexts — like, say, a wholesome disco smash accompanying a montage about a porn star’s financial windfall, or a cheesy 80s arena rock anthem playing during a drug deal gone bad — Anderson transforms our associations with these songs and makes them seem newly strange.
This playlist represents just one aspect of the director’s connection to music; I won’t even get into his long, rich collaboration with the composer and Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood (whose lovely score anchors “One Battle After Another”) or the many music videos Anderson has directed for artists like Haim and Fiona Apple.
It’s also the latest entry in our needle drop series. For more cinematic Amplifiers, check out the playlists I’ve compiled about the music of films by Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson and Luca Guadagnino.
But for now, gather all your cartons of Healthy Choice pudding, watch out for falling frogs, and press play on this Paul Thomas Anderson playlist.
I drink your milkshake,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. KC and the Sunshine Band: “Boogie Shoes”
It’s hard to pick just one song from Anderson’s 1997 breakout “Boogie Nights”; there’s so much music in the movie that it spawned a multivolume soundtrack. But I do love the feel-good montage toward the beginning of the film, set to this mid-’70s hit, when Mark Wahlberg’s iconic character Dirk Diggler celebrates his sudden success with a shopping spree — and a brand-new pair of groovy platform shoes. “Those are really cool,” John C. Reilly’s Reed Rothchild says. “Are they lizard?” Diggler answers, “No, they’re Italian.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. The Shirelles: “Soldier Boy”
This swooning 1962 No. 1 hit is featured in “One Battle After Another” as an eerie nod to a twisted sexual relationship that’s central to the plot. Crank that!
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Paul McCartney and Wings: “Let Me Roll It”
Paul McCartney’s glorious 1973 attempt at writing a John Lennon song — unconsciously, he has insisted, “although my use of tape echo did sound more like John than me” — accompanies a memorable scene in Anderson’s 2021 feature “Licorice Pizza,” when a moment of emotional revelation occurs on a rippling water bed.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Can: “Vitamin C”
The title card of Anderson’s 2014 romp “Inherent Vice,” his first adaptation of a Pynchon novel, appears to the tune of this slinky 1972 track by the German krautrock band Can. Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) has just visited her former flame Doc Sportello (a werewolfishly sideburned Joaquin Phoenix) and enlisted him to solve the twisty mystery that drives the plot. “Vitamin C” immediately immerses us in Doc’s paranoid (and usually stoned) state of mind.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Shelley Duvall: “He Needs Me”
One of Anderson’s most pronounced directorial influences is the great Robert Altman, and he paid direct tribute by using a song from Altman’s surreal 1980 film “Popeye” in his off-kilter 2002 romantic comedy “Punch-Drunk Love.” The composer Jon Brion remixed the original recording — written by Harry Nilsson and sung, indelibly, by Shelley Duvall — to fit seamlessly into his dreamy, oddball score.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Ella Fitzgerald: “Get Thee Behind Me Satan”
Ella Fitzgerald’s 1958 rendition of this Irving Berlin standard appears in an early scene of “The Master,” in which Phoenix’s unstable character Freddie Quell attempts to make a decent living as a department store photographer. Undercutting its period-appropriate elegance with a sense of sinister unease, the track foreshadows how well that gig will turn out.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Supertramp: “Goodbye Stranger”
In Anderson’s 1999 feature “Magnolia,” this Wurlitzer-driven 1979 Supertramp song plays during a gut-wrenching bar scene in which William H. Macy’s character, Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, gazes from across the room at the secret object of his affection — and his glistening braces. In all its lonely hearted tenderness, the song seems able to express everything Donnie cannot.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Aimee Mann: “Wise Up”
Here’s one of those songs that can reliably give me an instant lump in the throat in three seconds or less. The unforgettable “Wise Up” montage in “Magnolia,” during which the film’s principal characters sing the words to this Aimee Mann gem in their lowest ebbs of despair, is one of the most formally audacious moments in all of Anderson’s filmography. It was also the basis of a heated argument I had with one of my best friends in film school. (Respectfully, he’s still wrong: The scene totally works.)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Neil Young: “Journey Through the Past”
Anderson underscores a goofy but sweetly wistful flashback in “Inherent Vice” — during which Doc and Shasta consult an Ouija board that they hope will tell them where they can score some weed — with this Neil Young rarity. The better-known live version would have been a bit too dour, but this studio cut from the Neil Young archives, recorded during the “Harvest” sessions with his backing band the Stray Gators, fits the mood beautifully.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
10. Steely Dan: “Dirty Work”
Here’s another song from “One Battle After Another,” which accompanies the film’s sudden flash forward and brings us into the emotional inertia of Bob Ferguson’s present day. It also foreshadows a hilarious later bit of dialogue in which Bob reveals — spoiler alert — that he’s a Steely Dan fan. Of course.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
11. Night Ranger: “Sister Christian”
OK, fine — I didn’t pick just one song from “Boogie Nights.” This is perhaps the quintessential example of the way Anderson’s use of a popular (and in this case, rather overwrought) song in an unexpected context can completely transform it. After seeing “Boogie Nights,” I will never again be able to hear “Sister Christian” without picturing an outrageously high, mustachioed Alfred Molina waving a gun around while wearing a silk robe and a Speedo. My only comfort is that I know I am not the only one.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“11 Classic Paul Thomas Anderson Needle Drops” track list
Track 1: KC and the Sunshine Band, “Boogie Shoes”
Track 2: The Shirelles, “Soldier Boy”
Track 3: Paul McCartney and Wings, “Let Me Roll It”
Track 4: Can, “Vitamin C”
Track 5: Shelley Duvall, “He Needs Me”
Track 6: Ella Fitzgerald, “Get Thee Behind Me Satan”
Track 7: Supertramp, “Goodbye Stranger”
Track 8: Aimee Mann, “Wise Up”
Track 9: Neil Young, “Journey Through the Past”
Track 10: Steely Dan, “Dirty Work”
Track 11: Night Ranger, “Sister Christian”
Bonus Tracks
“It’s one for the ages,” writes our chief film critic Manohla Dargis, in her exultant review of “One Battle After Another.” I love a Manohla rave!
Kyle Buchanan also spoke with six of the film’s primary cast members about the making of “One Battle After Another,” for this entertaining feature in which Sean Penn describes Anderson as well as anyone ever has: “Paul is this very genteel prince of the San Fernando Valley who understands really wicked things and can write about them beautifully.” I concur.
Lindsay Zoladz is a pop music critic for The Times and writes the subscriber-only music newsletter The Amplifier.
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