Bones and all, because 80s music is all the rage in films and TV series

Premiering on Sky Cinema One tonight at 9pm Bones and allthe latest film by Luca Guadagnino. The film – awarded in Venice with the silver lion for directing – surprises for its soundtrack, which rides the wave of the revival of the 80s. To support a plot based on the love adventure of two marginalized young people – played by Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet – there is a very particular musical scaffolding. The film ranges between historical bands of those years such as Joy Division, Duran Duran, Kiss and A-ha. The soundtrack was curated by the Oscar-winning couple Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, the latter already leader of the electronic rock group ‘Nine inch nails’.

But where does this suddenness come from? back to the 80s?

Much of this revival is due to some very popular TV series – often Netflix – such as Strange things And Wednesday. In particular, the first, to better characterize the life of the four young protagonists, draws extensively from the music of those years, giving life to songs that lived a long hibernation. Thanks to Kate Bush’s series Running Up That Hill last summer it returned to first place in the world rankings more than thirty years after its publication. Wednesday Addams, on the other hand, thanks to her now iconic ballet, popularized a song like Cramps goo goo muckprobably little known even to the same fans of the American rock band.

The most popular genre within TV series and films is undoubtedly the New Wave. Movement born in the late ’70s, this musical trend combined the energy of punk with pioneering experimental arrangements, which would later give birth to alternative rock. Because of these characteristics, the genre is very well suited to screenwriting needs. To give other examples, in ’13’, between the Cure and New Order, pop star Selena Gomez covers Only you by Yazoo, while even in the darkest of the interactive episodes of the dystopian series Black Mirror there is space for a song like Panic by the Smiths.

We are not talking, however, only of dark music. The violent TV series The Boys moves within the discography of Billy Joel, while in Umbrella Academy Footlose is borrowed from the cult film Flashdance. Cobra Kai – sequel to the four chapters of Karate Kid – is full of references to more traditional hard rock music, such as Guns and Roses and Scorpions. The same remake of the historic soap Dynasty features music by groups such as Spandau Ballet and Tears for fears. How can we forget the new-found success of Journey, whose ‘Don’t stop believin’ is used both as a workhorse of the teen series Glee, and as background music for the final episode of the Sopranos. However, there is also space for the great Italian composers, with a large part of the Ennio Morricone and Piero Piccioni catalog enriching the scenes of Euphoria, a TV series whose protagonist is the well-known actress Zendaya.

Side note the social Tik Tok, where a large portion of the most viral videos use music from the 80s. In this case, due to video length requirements, the tracks are speeded up, but this does not compromise their diffusion among the new generations. An example is ‘Angel eyes’ by Abba, taken from the 1979 album ‘Voulez-Vous’. The song is certainly not the best known of the Swedish group’s discography, yet its overwhelming online success demonstrates the power of these new platforms, able to make the younger ones passionate about songs much older than them.