Drop The Needle: Top 5 Needle Drops of 2023

by Mitchel Green - January 18, 2024

| mitchelgreen34@gmail.com source: The Movie Database

This is the latest in an ongoing series about great needle drops throughout film history. What’s a needle drop? It’s the use of pop songs not created for the film it appears in — existing pieces of classical music (shoutout Bob Fosse’s use of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Concerto in G” in “All That Jazz”) or songs written specifically for the movie (shoutout Spike Lee’s use of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” in “Do The Right Thing”) might get their own special pieces. Movies have influenced my taste in music more than anything else, so I wanted to highlight and celebrate that influence here.

As great as 2023 was for movies, there was a shocking lack of memorable needle drops. Part of this was many of my favorite films of the year being scored rather than soundtracked due to being period pieces or fantasies where the use of pop music would feel out of place. But it might be more worrying than that. Is it getting prohibitively expensive for smaller or independent artists to license pop music for their films? When so many of my favorite filmmakers of the past 30 years came on my radar because of their abilities to soundtrack their movies, it would be a shame if they couldn’t use recognizable hits or deep cuts from major artists because they couldn’t afford it. Before getting into the list, a quick honorable mention to “The Killer” for every use of a Smiths song that describes what just happened to the main character. David Fincher came in with a hilarious bit in a movie that’s only fine.

5. “Tom Sawyer” - Rush (“The Iron Claw”)

One of the more conventional elements of this relatively unconventional sports drama is the rock music training montage. It’s a staple of the genre (though none have ever topped the “Rocky” series), but as the sports film has gotten more generic, so too have the needle drops. There are only so many songs to pick that can get the blood pumping as you sit half-asleep with your feet up in a comfortable theater chair. I’ll never understand why it took somebody so long to use Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” with this much sincerity in this context (those licensing fees ain’t cheap, I guess). But for a few minutes in “The Iron Claw,” we witness the entire Von Erich clan on top of the world doing what they love: being with their family. The film’s melodrama and bombast must be met with an equally over-the-top needle drop. Enter Rush.

4. “Freight Train” - The Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group, Nancy Whiskey (“Asteroid City”)

Plenty of classic 1950s country needle drops are relegated to the background of “Asteroid City,” but the most impactful is the final one that rises to the top of the soundtrack. After an incredibly crushing realization about life’s meaninglessness, Augie (and the actor who plays him) must carry on into the unknowability of the world. But he has been freed of the need to search for meaning in the universe and can now be there for his loved ones. Though the lyrics to this spell doom for Augie, his family, and everybody else, “Don’t know where he’s headin’ for / … / Got no future, got no hope / Just nothin’ but the rope,” the chipper instrumentation suggests that maybe there’s a way to live with that.

3. “Waterloo Sunset” - The Kinks (“BlackBerry”)

I’m a sucker for a well-timed Kinks needle drop, and while “BlackBerry” is full of great songs by some of my favorite artists, setting the ending of the film to “Waterloo Sunset” is both a great use of irony and sonically captures Research In Motion going out with a whimper. The light summer of love sound accompanying Ray Davies’s wistful lyrics is a funny counterpoint to the soul-crushing ruin Mike Lazaridis is feeling about the death of his company and his innovative product. You don’t really feel bad for him or Jim Balsillie. They did it to themselves. All you can do is laugh at their hubris and incompetence and fondly reflect on this short moment when BlackBerry ruled the world before the sun set on Waterloo, Ontario.

2. “How You Satisfy Me” - Spectrum (“Priscilla”)

Can a needle drop be “spoiled” in the trailer? Perhaps, but it certainly helps to reinforce the relationship between the song and the film if you’re seeing the same trailers at the movie theater every week (see also: “Licorice Pizza” and “Life on Mars?”). What’s most provocative about this song, in relation to the film itself, is that in a movie that skirts not having the rights to Elvis Presley’s music by using period-specific(ish) clean pop songs, all of a sudden, Sofia Coppola drops this droning 1990s noise rock track. Coppola reflects Priscilla’s desires by asserting her individuality to break the box of the world built to confine her. And apart from thematic weight, the song just rocks. It was among my most listened-to of 2023 (despite the film coming out in November) for a reason.

1. “PIMP” - Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band (“Anatomy of a Fall”)

The funniest, most ominous, and most memorable needle drop of 2023 is the Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band’s steel drum cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” in “Anatomy of a Fall.” Not that I had much of a relationship with 50 Cent’s music before seeing the film, but any chance of that happening with this song now is completely out the window. Like the best needle drops, “P.I.M.P.” is forever associated with “Anatomy of a Fall,” no matter what context others try to put around it. It helps that the film starts with this track, with the husband repeatedly blaring the already repetitive hook off-screen. Using a cover will also put off viewers who recognize the tune. It is so overbearing to Sandra’s interview but in a menacing way. There’s hatred, not mere inconsideration, on the part of her husband. In an instant, we understand both how this might have driven Sandra to murder and how unhappy her husband was in the marriage.