^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I started listening to this podcast and got so depressed, I reached into the recesses of my Spotify to pull out an album I bought in my childhood that taught me about music—the Forrest Gump soundtrack. The movie came out in 1994, so I was 12-going-on-13—the age my son is now. I wanted to hear the unadulterated sound of music-making with instruments, vocals, and microphones. I could’ve cried driving to Costco and reexperiencing the rawness of those songs. I learned to harmonize singing along to The Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Byrds. In Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Woman,” you hear him giggling and slapping that tinny tambourine in what sounds like a room full of people. It paints the picture of him having been recorded live on stage with some degree of raucous frivolity and crowd participation. Whether or not that was recreated in a recording studio mattered little to me, because I knew that no matter the environment, the humanity could not be simulated.
That soundtrack was a sprawling, eye-opening lesson in late 20th-century American music, but also a familiar warm blanket. Even if it didn’t contain the exact tracks my dad had played on the radio or on records at home, it offered previously unheard songs by the bands he had familiarized me with. The very next year, another banger soundtrack picked up where Forrest left off—Mr. Holland’s Opus (released December ’95, when I was 14). As my brain developed, so too did its ability to draw connections with the music: The Toys’ “A Lover’s Concerto” was a pop reimagining of a Bach minuet (music trivia I tucked away thanks to the Mr. Holland character himself). John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” communicated a tender love I felt I’d experienced a facsimile of, but a depth I understood I hadn’t yet known.
The Almost Famous soundtrack was released in the fall of 2000, when I was 18 and in my freshman year of college. It aligned with the aforementioned albums and plunged me further into my relationship with the music made before I was born. I had grown up with Simon & Garfunkel, but could only tap into the feelings “America” elicited because I felt a kinship to William Miller’s sister (played by Zooey Deschanel, the icon) leaving home to experience all life had to offer her, bestowing her enviable record collection to her little brother, which naturally opens his eyes, changes his life, and sets him on a course to become a music journalist. I’d never heard “America” before—how was this possible? It was a folk anthem for escape and finding yourself. Later in that film, Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” played over what I still consider the most magical moment in cinematic history: the fractured band singing along in community, making their way back together on a tour bus, united by a single chorus.
If memory serves, the final movie soundtrack that really bridged the music I had grown up on with the music I was now seeking for myself came with The Royal Tenenbaums (released December 2001, when I was 20). Wes Anderson not only introduced me to the music of Mark Mothersbaugh, but pulled together an overall melancholic playlist through songs like “These Days” (Nico) in Margot’s slow-motion bus arrival, and later, “Needle in the Hay” by Elliott Smith, and “Fly” by Nick Drake, whose discography I immediately sought out and played on repeat.
Now that my son stands in the place in life where I stood when the Forrest Gump soundtrack ushered me into ten years of self-discovery through music, I wonder about his playlists, which up until this point have been dominated by the pulsing loops of wordless video game soundtracks and electronica. Could these be the precursor to something deeper—or maybe not so much, given the insufferable AI-generated music pushing its way into all of our algorithmic streams? Here is one thing that gives me hope: he is branching out.
The soundtrack to K-Pop Demon Hunters has been the sound of our summer. The songs have a sparkle and fill the room with world-building music that you can tell was written by a formidable team of expert musicians and not an AI. So, although he is still very much rooted in the contemporary, I hope he begins to look back, as I did, to the music that came before the now, so he can uncover raw human experience—something he might strive to connect with as his brain develops and we get deeper and deeper into this AI/robotic… ahem… hellscape. Here’s hoping.