The Best 2023 Needle Drops in Film

“All of Us Strangers” — “The Power of Love”

“All of Us Strangers” ends (spoiler alert!) with a lot of permanent goodbyes — and then Andrew Scott begins to whisper. “I’ll protect you from The Hooded Claw / Keep the vampires from the door,” he says, late at night. Cue: Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “The Power of Love,” a swooning, melodramatic ballad that walks the line between heartfelt sincerity and self-mocking earnestness. In many ways, the song is the aural equivalent of the tonal tightrope of Andrew Haigh’s film (Haigh wrote the song into the script), which manages to treat serious topics with a deft touch and lend gravitas to light-hearted moments. Has a night out at a bar ever seemed more carefree — or seemed to cost as much? As the song soars to its ambiguous conclusion (“Make love your goal”) and the end credits roll, the movie is deepened by the song, as only a perfectly deployed needle drop can do. —MP

“Anatomy of a Fall” — “P.I.M.P.”

Bless the internet, it took approximately three seconds after “Anatomy of a Fall” hit theaters for someone to take the Snoop Dog instrumental remix of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” that features prominently throughout the film and make a two and a half hour “loop to relax / fall out of a window to” on YouTube. Listening to this song for the entire runtime of “Anatomy of a Fall” can’t be good for you, but the way that director Justine Triet deploys the track within the film definitely is. Even though it was a backup choice — Triet originally wanted Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” to be what Samuel (Samuel Theis) blasts through a speaker he’s taken into the attic while his wife Sandra (Sandra Hüller) is being interviewed downstairs — “P.I.M.P” was simply meant to be; there’s something so much funnier, meaner, and descriptive of who Samuel is by him picking this calypso-infused howl of passive-aggression to play while installing insulation. As the song reappears, it becomes emblematic of Samuel’s tragedy, which neither begins nor ends with his death. —SS

“Beau Is Afraid” — “Always Be My Baby”

“Always Be My Baby” is four minutes of bubblegum bliss, a song performed so warmly by Mariah Carey that it’s easy to skim over the fact that its central declaration of devotion reads like a threat (“Boy don’t you know you can’t escape me/Oh darlin’ ’cause you’ll always be my baby”). Naturally, for his neurotic odyssey of intimacy issues in “Beau Is Afraid,” Ari Aster chose to deploy this sunny ode to loving possession during one of the least romantic scenes in film history. Reunited with his childhood crush Elaine (a phenomenal Parker Posey), Joaquin Phoenix’s Beau is about to get his cherry popped when she takes him to bed with the song soundtracking their tryst. But Beau’s many hangups make him a nervous lay, and Elaine has to methodically readjust her approach to the experience several times — hitting restart on her Spotify each time things get delayed. It’s painfully awkward before the scene turns horrifying for a completely different reason, and Carey’s melismatic vocals and the cute little “Do do doop do doop da dum” that open “Always Be My Baby” provide a brutal contrast between the song’s euphoric fantasy and Beau’s mortifying reality. —WC

“Bottoms” — Complicated

“Bottoms” doesn’t quite take place in the real world. Director Emma Seligman and her team craft one that is as heightened as teen hormones in high school. From the slickness of the fight choreography to the snappiness of the editing to the blink-and-you-‘ll-miss-them jokes hidden throughout the production design, the film embraces a certain elasticity when it comes to things like the position of football jocks within a social hierarchy or the power of nerd horniness. When it comes to music, then, “Bottoms” could only have bangers. Seligman’s selection across the film is pretty immaculate —including an extended, falling-in-love/revenge montage set to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” — but it’s telling that one of the tracks written into her and Rachel Sennot’s script was Avril Lavinge’s “Complicated.” There’s a heightened, outsized power the song has that just a few bars will transport any and every North American millennial back to a moment of teen yearning. Seeing it realized on a screen as PJ’s (Rachel Sennot) and Josie’s (Ayo Edebiri) low point, complete with a lighting change as choreographed as any musical number, activates maybe the most joyous version of the Leo DiCaprio pointing meme for the audience; but that’s kind of core to “Bottoms.” The film thrives on taking the tropes and conventions of straight high school stories and centering exactly the queer emo kids who listened to Avril Lavinge. — SS

“The Creator” — “Everything in Its Right Place”

There’s a fine art to a good Radiohead needle drop, and a disappointingly generic sci-fi epic like “The Creator” — visionary as its VFX might be — doesn’t quite have the grace or purpose required to support one of the greatest songs ever written. Be that as it may, Gareth Edwards’ post-apocalyptic saga about the tension between the next generation of AI and what’s left of humanity is never more focused than it is during the big set-up scene where the ambient sounds of a helicopter approaching a top-secret android facility are suddenly replaced by the iconic opening bars of “Everything in Its Right Place.” More than 20 years have passed since that song first announced “Kid A” to the world, and still nothing has done a better job of capturing the discordant unease of the future’s threat to our sense of self. In fact, this needle drop so perfectly captures the energy of Edwards’ film that the rest of “The Creator” just feels like it’s trying to get it back. It can’t, but for one indelible moment, you can hear the movie that Edwards was hoping to make. —DE

“Guardians of the Galaxy 3” — “Creep (Acoustic Version)”

There’s a lot of pressure these days on “Guardians of the Galaxy” needle drops. The opening of the first two films are righteous, gleeful repurposing of James Gunn’s favorite pop-rock tracks in an anarchic sci-fi context. So it only feels right that “Vol. 3” zags instead of zigs for its opening, uniting all the Guardians in a roving tracking shot but doing it in the moodiest, most lo-fi way possible. And that, of course, means using the acoustic version of “Creep” by Radiohead. It’s after “Endgame,” and we can’t have nice things from the ’80s anymore. There are more cathartic uses of music in the film, but this one does a fantastic job of setting the tone and seeding an unease within the Guardians. And of course, bonus points for the way wanting a perfect body and wanting a perfect soul line up with what we learn about Rocket. —SS

“Maestro” — “It’s The End of the World as We Know It”

“Maestro” utilizes the music of Leonard Bernstein throughout as score for the film about Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and his wife Felicia (Carrie Mulligan) over the course of their lives together. It would be kinda silly not to. But including “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” by REM, and specifically the line that would be relevant to a movie about Leonard Bernstein, is one of a few fantastically funny moments that injects a mischievous spirit into the movie. It’s too on the nose. It’s too indulgent. But so is Lenny at this point in his life, and watching him blast the REM track before going in to teach a student conductor/do a little rave as a treat situates the audience perfectly.  — SS

“M3gan” — “Titanium (Megan’s Version)”

It’s the eerie plausibility that makes “M3GAN” really sing. Akela Cooper’s brilliant horror script-turned-viral genre sensation — about a killer android turning on its creator (Allison Williams) and her adorable niece (Violet McGraw) — is hilariously believable at times. Few details feel quite as real-to-life as the post-algorithmic, corporate music culture that got M3GAN to perform “Titanium” as a lullaby — just seconds after we see her get on all fours and kill a kid in the woods.

The pitch-perfect needle drop comes after a scene showing MEGAN’s grisly vehicular homicide of a bully named Brandon (Jack Cassidy); she’s soothing 8-year-old Cady, the target of the bullying and the only witness to the death, about Brandon’s brain getting splattered on the pavement, miraculously missing the point of Cady’s tears. “If heaven exists, it wouldn’t be for boys like Brandon, would it?” she chimes. The song is the perfect follow-up to the inhuman creation’s emotional confusion, a coda to a misfire of machine learning that’s perfectly shallow and out of step with modern children’s attitudes towards music… and murder.  —Ali Forman

“No Hard Feelings” — “Maneater”

A good song can totally change the complexion of an entire movie, but it’s rare to see something that has the wisdom to recognize the right track, and/or the courage to entrust it with that kind of responsibility. It’s almost as rare as — I don’t know — seeing a bonafide comedy in theaters these days. The story of a 32-year-old Jennifer Lawrence lookalike named Maddie who’s covertly hired to “prepare” a rich couple’s socially inept 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) during the summer before he goes to college, “No Hard Feelings” spends most of its first hour doing everything it can to convince you that Percy is hopeless and his parents’ scheme is bound to fail. But then, just when you’re sure that you won’t buy the movie’s inevitable pivot towards sweetness, Percy accepts Maddie’s challenge to play a song on the piano in the middle of Montauk’s fanciest restaurant. His choice is Hall & Oates’ “Maneater,” which has already been established as a running joke in the movie, but Percy’s slowed-down and sensitive spin on that mid-tier bop is beautiful enough to make Maddie feel like she’s never heard it before — or properly seen the person who’s playing it. Percy has certainly seen her, though, as his heartfelt cover pierces right through Maddie’s ungenerous self-image, proving their arrangement mutually beneficial in the span of just a few short choruses. —DE

“Polite Society” — “Maar Dala”

Sometimes a needle drop feels more like a mic drop, and that’s exactly the effect in “Polite Society” during the opening notes of “Maar Dala.” Director Nida Manzoor already laid out her master plan; dressing Ria (Priya Kansara) in an emerald-green anarkali, noting that the character will dance at her sister’s wedding, surrounding her with Kathak dancers on an ornate floor. All of it is direct homage to how the song was picturized in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2002 film “Devdas,” which had this reporter thinking about “Maar Dala” even before it started playing. The opening notes alone sent me, and it keeps going for several minutes as Kansara covers the iconic dance originally performed by Madhuri Dixit (vocals by Kavita Krishnamurthy). Manzoor wrote the song into the script, and told IndieWire that she didn’t have a backup plan if it wasn’t cleared. The visuals alone would have evoked “Maar Dala” even if set to a different song, but what a treat that audiences got to experience the sequence as intended and that a whole new audience is introduced to this visual and auditory banger.

“Saltburn” — “Murder on the Dancefloor”

In the last 15 minutes of “Saltburn,” the onyx-black comedy of Emerald Fennell’s sophomore film seems to have curdled into something else. But never fear: The machinations and final reveals all culminate in one of the great that’s-all-folks dance sequences (up there with “Aftersun” and the Season 3 finale of “The Great”) as Barry Keoghan prances — fully nude — through the historic halls of Saltburn to the posh, effortlessly cool vocals of Sophie Ellis-Bextor on “Murder on the Dancefloor.” “Gonna burn this goddamn house right down,” she sings with the throwaway chic of a club kid Peggy Lee, and Keoghan executes nimble choreography worthy of Fred Astaire (though as he’s fully nude, Gene Kelly might be a more apt choice). Wishes fulfilled, Oliver’s life becomes a dance party, even as he shakes and shimmies to an oddly violent ode to hedonism. Three years after redefining “Angel of the Morning,” never doubt the power of an Emerald Fennell needle drop. —MP

“Strays” — “Wrecking Ball”

“Strays” has already included a bizarre Dennis Quaid cameo, a prison break fueled entirely by dog shit, and more dog urination jokes than previously existed in history when the abandoned Reggie (Will Ferrell) arrives at his final destination. He’s overcome a hell of a lot of get where he’s going, but there’s only one thing left in his roaring rampage of revenge: He’s going to bite his owner’s dick off. And just as things seem to be tipping into forgive and forget, Miley Cyrus’ voice comes crackling in as Reggie’s new friends hold down Doug, and Reggie goes ham on his hog. What better tune to convey Reggie’s curdled devotion and his heartbreak at realizing how truly awful Doug was all along? “I just wanted you to let me in,” Cyrus sings… and Reggie unleashes his rage on Doug’s balls. A masterfully executed joke; a perfect needle drop. —MP

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” — “Unwritten”

There are so many great tracks in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” — everything from Blackstreet to BTS and multiple virtuoso uses of “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes — and they are such an eclectic assortment that directors Jeff Rowe and Kyle Spears are able to capture the spirit of living in (the sewer system of) New York City even within the film’s joyfully chaotic, notebook-margin-doodle animation style. But easily the funniest, most needle-dropping needle drop of the bunch is the use of Natasha Beddingfield’s “Unwritten” over the scene where intrepid teen reporter April O’Neil (Ayo Edibiri) takes her first crack at presenting the news on camera. If anything can ameliorate a barf montage and yet somehow make it funnier, it is hearing “release your inhibitions” just before April loses her lunch. The build of the song works so perfectly it feels like the mid-aughts anthem was written for this moment. Or perhaps unwritten. —SS