20 Movie Scenes That Were Made Epic By Perfect Song Choices

The use of popular and rock music for film soundtracks has been a contentious issue in the past. Even though, since the rise of independent cinema in the early-to-mid 1990s, cinema-goers have been trained to anticipate and expect a pop or rock song to be used in conjunction with the images they see on screen, this hasn't always been the case. Films, traditionally, have been scored by music specifically written for the film. Rock and Roll films, beginning with 1955's The Blackboard Jungle, showed that rock music could be used in films and produce great results. Taking their cue from them, the counter-culture cinema of the 1960s and 70s further explored this practice. Since then, the presence of pop, rock, folk, dance and every other genre of music in film has grown. Scenes featuring pop and rock songs are often criticised for bringing the narrative to a halt and ruining the flow of a film (as well as making the viewer realise that they're actuallywatching a film), but, when done right, adding a popular track to a particular scene can really make a scene great. By selecting the appropriate track, a director (or music supervisor) can take even the most ordinary sequence and make it special. Here are twenty scenes, some 'ordinary', that were made exceptional thanks to a great song choice.