This month, the Mental Jukebox revisits the movie soundtracks of the nineties. The music I’m highlighting are some of my personal favorites. In many cases, the movies themselves were huge for me as well. But the focus will still be on the music – as always. Let’s bring on the throwback classics, the grunge, the gangsta rap, and the indie gems. #31DaysOf90sMovieSongs
Movie: City of Angels
I once read that if a guitar and a banjo were to have a baby, that baby would be a mandolin. Sounds about right. You can hear hints of both in this instrument that seems to be saved only for the right occasion rather than used as a regular instrument. Of course, the mandolin was always around – even hard rockers Led Zeppelin found a way to incorporate it on their slower, softer classics in the seventies like “Going to California” and “The Battle of Evermore”. In the eighties, the instrument fell by the wayside as synthesizers and loud, power chord-driven guitar hooks took over. Then, in the nineties, it returned, most famously with the R.E.M. hit “Losing My Religion” at the beginning of the decade – and then again with The Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” toward the end of the decade.
While the mandolin plays a prominent role and serves as the entry point for the song, what’s great about “Iris” is that it’s joined later in the song by a full string arrangement and the electric guitar through these sweeping, soaring hooks. Written specifically for the movie City of Angels, “Iris” was one of the most memorable anthems of late nineties alternative rock. The tide had already turned abruptly away from grunge and splintered off into dozens of directions, including the guitar-driven angst of early Radiohead, the indie musings of Yo La Tengo and Belle & Sebastian, and the accessible, mid-tempo recordings of The Goo Goo Dolls.
“When everything feels like the movies, you bleed just to know you're alive.”