Soundtracks sounded on the radio

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About "Shallow" and the award ceremony of the Academy this Sunday, we show you these soundtracks

This Sunday will be awarded in the Academy Awards the award for Best Original Song and Best Soundtrack. Two of the nominated songs have transcended the film world to be nominated also in one category of the Grammy Awards, which will be delivered a few weeks ago. This is "Shallow", by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper; and "All the Stars", by Kendrick Lamar and Sza. About these nominations, which have come to sound on the radio, we show you some soundtracks of movies that you should keep an eye on and that show a time.

Leer en español: Soundtracks que sonaron en la radio

American Graffitti (1973)

Of the first films of the then famous George Lucas, American Graffiti is far from being a science fiction movie. It's almost the opposite: it's a film about everyday life and nostalgia. Unlike the Star Wars saga, which would make Lucas famous, American Graffiti looks to the past instead of the future. It is a 1973 film set in the California of 1962 in which a group of young people spend their last night before adulthood together and at the same time separated. As a chorus of the night of these teenagers we always have the music that sounds on the radio of their cars, and since it is a movie that appeals to nostalgia, the musical selection is careful and tries to be part of the atmosphere along with the costumes, the cars, the hairstyles. The themes of the great Beach Boys but also of Chuck Berry, the Clovers and the Flamingos make up this soundtrack that makes a transition between the fifties and the sixties.

Saturday Night Fever (1977)

A classic. This movie is made by its music. John Travolta dances on Saturdays at night to the sound of the album in this 1977 film. The soundtrack is composed of songs by the Bee Gees, which give a look at the seventies party but also work as background music of the love of the characters. Although it is mostly disco, the soundtrack has a variety in the sense that it has party songs like "Disco Inferno" by The Trammps, but also slow and romantic songs like "More than a Woman" by the Bee Gees. Saturday Night Fever shows that since then the record could be diverse and should be taken seriously.

Read also: These are the songs nominated for the 2019 Academy Awards

Glow (2017)

And we went from the cinema to television. Glow is a series of Netflix that has been two seasons and is set in the eighties. A group of women is gathered to set up a female wrestling television program called GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling). The selected women must then deal with their personal lives while they train and learn everything about wrestling and become friends with each other. While they prepare, suffer, dance and fight, we listen to eighties successes that serve as a backdrop not only for the fight program but also for their lives. This varied soundtrack, moreover, is not exclusively rock or exclusively pop: there are songs like "Cherry Pie" or "Cum on Feel the Noize" to songs by Madonna and Cindy Lauper, passing, even by Run DMC. It is a nostalgic soundtrack that does not exclude any of the popular genres that played on the radio at the time and also shows the diversity of the characters in the series.

Do The Right Thing (1989)

One of the first films of the now nominated Spike Lee. In Do The Right Thing, the character of Radio Raheem walks through the neighborhood with a radio in which only Public Enemy sounds. This radio will be a crucial element in the outcome of the film and the music that plays in it, "Fight the Power," will be a background that, like a Greek choir, will anticipate the course of events in the film. As in American Graffiti, there is in Do The Right Thing a radio program that works as a narrator, a voice-over that works as a DJ of the soundtrack of the sufferings of the neighborhood that the characters go through on a hot day. The music in the film also works as a sample of racial tensions: Ruben Blades fights with Public Enemy in a war between Latinos and blacks that, again, anticipate what will happen on the night of that typical day in a few streets of Brooklyn.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2018)

Back to television. This series is set in the nineties and narrates the events surrounding the murder of Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace. This soundtrack, then, features elegant songs by Italian composers such as Vicenzo Bellini, in contrast to eighties classics such as "Gloria" by Laura Branigan or "Whip it" by DEVO. The series manages, through music, to contrast the characters of Gianni Versace and his murderer Andrew Cunanan and also shows, also with the songs, the meeting points between both characters.

Read also: 9 songs that will make you feel empowered

Big Little Lies (2017)

Finally, a series set in the present. In Big Little Lies, the mothers of a group of children are confronted by a conflict between their children at school. One of the girls is the soundtrack teacher of this HBO series. She, aware of the tense stitches her parents go through, for example, put songs to be reconciled, or to dance, etc. Thus, the soundtrack deepens or lightens tensions in the series as well as being a list of precious songs that are not limited only to the time in which we live. It has songs by Frank Ocean but also by Neil Young and Elvis Presley going through rarities like Miss Kittin or songs sung by the same Zoe Kravitz, who sings in one of the final scenes of the first season.

LatinAmerican Post | Juliana Rodríguez Pabón

Translated from "Soundtracks que sonaron en la radio"