Sunday Signature Song: Captain America: The First Avenger

Welcome to a new weekly feature here at Movies with Abe. Original songs in films certainly add to the overall experience of going to or watching a movie, whether they play over the end credits or during a particular scene during the movie. There is an Oscar category to recognize the Best Original Song of each year, and this feature will aim to spotlight one terrific song that defined a movie but didn’t end up getting nominated. Submissions are welcome – offer your thoughts on this song and others like it in the comments below!

Song: Star Spangled Man
Artist: Alan Menken and David Zippel
Film: Captain America: The First Avenger
Year: 2011

This isn’t some incredible musical composition that you can really get into singing and appreciate the melody and lyrics. Instead, it’s the perfect way of describing and addressing Captain America, a hero who works well in comic books but, before this 2011 film, didn’t even translate positively to the big or small screen. What this song does is help to acknowledge the cheesiness of his costume and his overarching purpose, to represent America to other countries. It’s also a positive way to bridge the gap between Captain America, described in his film’s subtitle as the first Avenger, and the rest of his team who exist in the modern day. The 2011 film that started what is already a very successful franchise was set back in the 1940s, and this song, which looks and sounds like a USO tribute show, does its job perfectly, building up Captain America as a nationalist symbol, one who couldn’t possibly be seen as anything but a rallying force for freedom and justice worldwide. Its performance in the film finds Chris Evans’s masked Steve Rogers reading his lines off the back of his shield and marching around triumphantly, reenacting his many auspicious feats. It’s designed to be corny and enthusiastically represented as such, complete with a knockout punch for an actor playing Hitler as the final scene of the stage act. Who wouldn’t love Captain America after hearing this?

Sunday Signature Song: The Great Gatsby

Welcome to a new weekly feature here at Movies with Abe. Original songs in films certainly add to the overall experience of going to or watching a movie, whether they play over the end credits or during a particular scene during the movie. There is an Oscar category to recognize the Best Original Song of each year, and this feature will aim to spotlight one terrific song that defined a movie but didn’t end up getting nominated. Submissions are welcome – offer your thoughts on this song and others like it in the comments below!

Song: Young and Beautiful
Artist: Lana Del Rey
Film: The Great Gatsby
Year: 2013

Baz Luhrmann’s cinematic adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel is full of excess in so many ways, and it’s fitting that its most memorable song is one that talks about age, attractiveness, and the impossibility of it lasting. This is just one of a few songs in the film, including “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody,” that feel extremely anachronistic, making this 1925 story spring to life with more modern yet still dated music that energizes the already roaring melodies of the 1920s. There’s something about Lana Del Rey’s soft voice that makes this young incredibly haunting, pleading to be able to “bring her man” when she “gets to heaven” and asking “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” That’s really what the film is about, as the allure of Gatsby’s parties are the fact that they are so lavish and productive, yet when he is no longer there to run them, it’s as if they never existed at all. Competing against “Let It Go” from “Frozen,” this song was never going to win the Oscar, but it at least deserved a nomination alongside the film’s other two recognized qualities, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. Del Rey followed up this up with the title theme from “Big Eyes,” which got nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original Song in 2014, but that song, while still haunting, wasn’t nearly as effective or positively memorable. This tune, on the other hand, is sure to be remembered long after the film in which it first played.