This month, I’m looking back at movies and tv shows to rediscover songs that graced the screen. The scenes and the music are inseparable. They’re engrained in our heads and our hearts. And they’re proof that the best music we have doesn’t exist in isolation. It attaches itself to a moment or an experience. #SceneSongs
Movie: Batman Forever
The trajectory of a song is a peculiar thing. This one started out in a place that most songs don’t climb back out of: the trash can. Seal wrote it well before his debut album, and then tossed it aside not feeling happy about it. By the time he was about to record his second album, he decided to show it to his producer. Together, the two of them resurrected “Kiss From A Rose”. But shortly after the song entered the charts, it fell out. Then, in a twist of fate, it came back with a vengeance, reaching the top of the charts in the U.S. Of course, this second life and incredible success had a lot to do with the fact that it was chosen as the love theme for Batman Forever. But, there’s a lot more to it than that, starting with the fact that there’s just no other song quite like it in history.
“Kiss From A Rose” is as ambitious as it gets. The melody, epic. The musicality, cinematic. The voice, grand. The song takes you on an elegant voyage back in time. They don’t write pop songs like it anymore, and likely never will. “Kiss From A Rose” is like a black and white movie, and exceptionally grand at times. It takes its listeners on a voyage through a caravan of acoustics guitars, synthesizers, drums and string arrangements. But the most memorable part is Seal’s voice. The song display’s Seal’s iconic, soulful vocals with incredible versatility up and down the scales.
“And now that your rose is in bloom, a light hits the gloom on the gray.”