The Magic of Coming-of-Age Soundtracks
by Annie Wojnarowski
I’ve often found that when watching certain coming-of-age movies, they feel made just for me. Intellectually, I understand that these movies with massive budgets and studio backings are made for at least one other person than just a girl from New Jersey. What I think cements a connection between the viewer and a movie is the music. It’s the necessary bridge connecting the characters with the audience. Songs tell the viewer how to feel because that’s how we assume the characters are feeling. The music is as much of a character as the protagonist.
In the Greta Gerwig-directed Lady Bird (2017), there’s a scene in which Lady Bird and her best friend Julie are lying down in their car sobbing to Dave Matthews Band’s 1996 hit, “Crash into Me.” I have never sobbed with my friend to a Dave Matthews song, and I have yet to find someone that has. However, this moment felt like looking into a mirror. That’s partly due to the impeccable writing and acting, but that scene would not have worked without the song expressing the heartbreak and melodrama that Lady Bird and Julie felt at that moment.
After I watched the movie for the first time I walked out into the parking lot, got into my friend’s car, reclined our seats back, and listened to “Crash into Me.” We sat in silence, soaking in the film that unraveled us into little pieces. Us trying to cry over a heartache that we didn’t have. Lady Bird was the most intense movie-going experience I had ever had by that point. So many elements of the movie felt like Gerwig had been stalking me for years, taking notes, and implementing them into her film. I had never felt more seen than in that film.
In another film, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, released in 2012, had an incredible impact on Generation Z. In 2012, quotes from the movie were reblogged on Tumblr, made into video edits, and written in innumerable 13-year-olds’ journals. However, a specific scene in the film caused a resurgence of a song that before this film, I had only heard of during my car rides with my parents: “Come on Eileen.” The song, released in 1982 by Dexys Midnight Runners, was well known before The Perks of Being A Wallflower was released, however, when it was used in a particular scene, it kind of became a phenomenon in school dances and proms.
In the film, Sam and Patrick, two step-siblings, played by Emma Watson and Ezra Miller, start dancing to a song that they declare is the only good thing that the DJ has played thus far. With them dancing in the middle of the floor, protagonist Charlie (Logan Lerman) watches while standing against a wall at the edge of the room. Slowly, he starts to walk closer and closer to the siblings before he is dancing with them, shedding his anxiety for a moment of bliss. Clearly hitting a nerve with the audience, I found that many of my classmates had also loved that moment. In freshman formals and junior proms, we all were dancing uninhibitedly in the middle of our gymnasium.
There are things that cannot be conveyed just by words; it takes the layered art of lyrics and instrumentals to convey the hurt, the happiness, and the harrowing decisions made by the protagonists that we come to care for so deeply. Even in TV shows like Freaks and Geeks, where the setting and the situation are not ones that I can personally relate to, I still find kinship with the show that is strengthened with the songs the show included. Specifically, the homecoming scene in the pilot episode of the show is the most effective use of music that I have seen in a coming-of-age piece of media. Because this show is a period piece, I don’t think anyone born after 1995 can connect the song to a particular experience in their adolescence. However, with the combination of its slow build-up and then thundering repeating chorus coupled with how the characters react to this song, this scene is where I’ve felt most seen as a young person trying to figure it all out.
“Come Sail Away” by Rush, a song from 1977, is a dead ringer for the kind of experience and feelings the teenagers in the show know so well. In this particular scene, Sam, protagonist Lindsay’s younger brother, drudges up the courage to ask his crush to slow dance at homecoming. However, by the time they reach the middle of the dance floor, the song picks up, forcing Sam to dance faster than he would want to. At the same time, Lindsay goes dancing with Eli, a boy that she inadvertently embarrassed earlier in the episode. As the song gets louder and louder, and Geddy Lee repeats: “Come sail away / Come sail away / Come sail away with me”, Eli becomes less and less hesitant and dances more and more freely. By the end of the song, they are all dancing with no self-awareness of how they look. It’s a moment of catharsis that only works because of Rush’s ballad. It’s a moment of melancholy because this time is fleeting but it’s also a moment of celebration because these characters feel the infallibility of youth.
Coming-of-age films always try to hit the most vulnerable parts of our hearts. It is the most manipulating and strategic element to this genre which I find to be extremely sadistic. Walking out of the theater, I’ve found myself thinking how a movie could have broken my heart so mercilessly. These kinds of films are more than frames of pictures; they have to be seen as living breathing pieces of art affecting us in a way that everyday life may not. The music in these films is integral to the execution of this catharsis. These moments in these films strike a chord in me that I never knew I had. A character can say one thing and I feel like I don’t only know them, I am them.