Co-worker, fellow Twitter buddy and all-around fun gal Jen Wilson and I saw Easy A Tuesday afternoon.
In it, main character Olive bemoans that she wishes her life was directed by John Hughes, including (of course) her own musical number for no apparent reason.
This then caused Jen to pose the following tweet:
Pondering: If my life included a musical number for no apparent reason, what would it be? What would yours be?
Now, of course, the Easy A reference came from this:
Easy A then had its own musical number for no reason (not on YouTube yet, but even if it was I wouldn’t want to ruin what is the crux of the movie). Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Easy A aren’t the first films to employ these. 500 Days of Summer did to hilarious results (you’ll never listen to Hall and Oates the same way again):
(There’s also a deleted scene that is a companion to this one on the film’s DVD I highly recommend checking out, you can do so here.)
Back to Jen’s tweet though: What would my musical-number-for-no-apparent-reason be?
I don’t think there’s a clear-cut answer to that. Musical-numbers-for-no-apparent-reason work so well in film because they represent a moment in that character’s life. Like the full musical format, they are a way for a character to express how he’s feeling at any given moment in a way that strict words cannot.
Look at the 500 Days of Summer clip above. The scene is called “The Best Morning Ever” and comes after Summer and Tom have spent their first night together. (Similarly, the deleted scene is known as “The Worst Morning Ever” and comes after the two broke up.)
Need another example? I give you the late, great Heath Ledger:
Music is a way for us to communicate like no other. While often used in non-musical films to convey love or romance (see clips above), it’s also a way for us to feel what the character is.
I remember going to see 13 Going on 30 and feeling a pit in my stomach when Jennifer Garner’s character Jenna starts to do the Thriller dance by herself at a work function and no one is joining in. She has to force her old pal Matty to start dancing with her, then her co-workers follow suit:
When you boil it down, musical-numbers-for-no-apparent-reason do have a reason for being — they express a character’s inner feelings at that moment in time. It’s because of this I don’t think anyone can define themselves by one musical number.
When you’re in love, your musical-number-for-no-apparent-reason will likely be different than when you’ve just been dumped.
Can music define a period or time in your life? Undoubtedly. That’s why music has the power to take you back to a place where you were when you first heard that song, when it meant something to you. Does it make you want to break out into song and sing and dance? Most often, no.
Do I want my very own Ferris Bueller moment? Yes, but I don’t need to have a parade singing Twist and Shout in order to get it.
What about you? Have you ever had the feeling of wanting to break out into song? Care to share why? Or what’s your favourite musical number in a non-musical movie (or TV show!)? Why? Leave a comment.
Move over Dire Straits; some other “unfit” songs for Canadian radio
Thursday morning news broke that the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council had deemed Money for Nothing by Dire Straits “unfit” for Canadian radio due to their use of the word “faggot” in the lyrics.
In response, Dire Straights has been a trending topic on Twitter for two days now, it’s been steadily climbing up the iTunes Canada chart (as of this writing it was No. 56) and three radio stations plan to play the song for an hour straight in protest Friday night.
So in the spirit of the Canadian Broadcast Standard Council, here are some other songs that came out years ago, but due to political correctness, should be banned from Canadian radio until the offensive term is bleeped out.
5. Louie Louie by the Kingsman (1963
Did the FBI ever fully complete their obscenity investigation into the lyrics of this song? Until we know what they’re really saying here, we should cut this from radio.
4. Blame Canada — South Park (1999)
Really, this should go without saying.
This song incites hate toward Canada, and puts our wonderful nation at fault for everything it can think of (“it seems everything went wrong since Canada came along”). And, they have the nerve to call us “not a real country anyway.”
Don’t even get me started on the Robin Williams performance of this at the Oscars in 2000 (just goes to show you, even the Oscars can reward hate speech).
3. I Touch Myself — the Divinyls (1991)
Come on, we all know what she really means here and Canadian radio is not the place to talk about such things.
Could you imagine being in a car and having to explain these lyrics to a child? What are the radio programmers out there thinking?
Absolute disgust.
2. Relax — Frankie Goes to Hollywood (1983)
“Relax don’t do it/When you want to go to it/Relax don’t do it/When you want to come.”
Released in 1983, this song barely made much a splash on the charts. But after it was banned in 1984 by the BBC due to the sexual nature of the album’s artwork and this song’s lyrics, it shot to No. 1 on the U.K. charts.
Perhaps Money for Nothing will see the same sort of chart explosion after it’s ban in Canada.
1. Raise a Little Hell — Trooper
Yes, Trooper is a classic Canadian band and I don’t like banning them from Canadian radio either, but sometimes you have to make hard decisions.
This song is a call to arms, encouraging revolution (“If you don’t like what you got, why don’t you change it?”) and we can’t be encouraging Canadian citizens to participate in changing their country.
This song also must be the next song banned on Canadian radio after its use on This Hour has 22 Minutes where Canadians politicians encouraged the Canadian public to vote in the 2000 election. Just sickening.
What songs do you think should be banned from Canadian radio and why?