10 Rock Bands That Made Songs Specifically For Movies

When Rock Goes Cinematic.

Chester Bennington, from left, and Mike Shinoda of the band Linkin Park perform in concert during their Carnivores Tour 2014 at the Susquehanna Bank Center on Friday, Aug. 15, 2014, in Camden, N.J. (Photo by Owen Sweeney/Invision/AP)
Owen Sweeney/AP

When sitting down to write a song, you can never really predict where your inspiration is going to come from. Over the course of decades, artists have found some of the strangest ways to make classic songs, either delving deep into their psyche to find something they’ve never seen or just making songs about the world they see around them. It could be war, it could be society, but it’s just as easy to take a few cues from the silver screen as well.

Though not all of these songs were written with these movies in mind, they became linked to these certain scenes for the rest of the time, being either immortalized on the soundtrack or as a stand alone single. Just because an artist writes a song for a movie doesn’t automatically make them a sell out though.

If anything, having a bunch of these songs standing as leftovers from your mainline albums would be a dream for any other band, taking the best pieces of what you were already working on and shaping them into something completely different for the movie crowd. As the old saying goes, most rock stars just want to be movie stars anyway, and this is one of those rare times where both mediums mixed in just the right way.

10. Decode - Paramore

Most of the people who grew up watching the Twilight movies could probably tell you how campy some of them are to look back on. Even though the raw physical appeal of a pale sparkly vampire may have set the world on fire, Hayley Williams herself has owned up to some of the best moments in the franchise being pretty cheesy when she first saw it. That didn’t mean that they skimped out on the soundtrack by any stretch.

Since emo has been a genre known for wearing its heart on its sleeve a little too much, Decode became the perfect fit for Twilight’s first installment, with Paramore coming off of Brand New Eyes and already tapping into their more vulnerable side. Though most of the emotions on the record had to do with the band letting all of the drama out on each other, this song feels like the fallout of a relationship, with Hayley saying that she feels like she barely knew her old flame by the end of things.

And while most Paramore songs tend to sound larger than life in this part of their career, you can tell that they understood the assignment here, with more muted guitars than usual and melodies that sound like you’re all alone in the middle of a dark forest. The movies might not have held up as well, but the songs definitely do.

 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

I'm just a junkie for all things media. Whether it's music, movies, TV, or just other reviews, I absolutely adore this stuff. But music was my first love, and I love having the opportunity to share it with you good people. Follow Me On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/timcoffman97