It’s rare to see a new interview with someone whose music is featured in a Woody Allen movie, in that most such people have been dead for fifty years. If that’s an exaggeration, it’s a slight one; the 72-year-old Allen isn’t one for Footloose-style compilations of potential Top 40 hits (of course, by citing Footloose I now feel 72 years old myself). He’s more prone to raiding his collection of 78s for the likes of Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, and while he often comes up with some great stuff, it’s still very familiar stuff – just one more element of his filmmaking style that has grown stale over the years.
So it’s at least a little encouraging to learn that the Woodman’s latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, features music by a living, breathing band. Billboard recounts the story of “little-known Spanish indie band” Giulia y los Tellarini, whose “music came to Allen's attention last year during filming, when the girlfriend of one of the band members left a CD with some of the group's songs on it at the director's Barcelona hotel, the fashionable Hotel D'Arts.”
"Our music is difficult to classify. It's got loads of influences," says lead singer Giulia Tellarini. "I think one of the main things about us is that we sing in different languages. We try and get inspired by the atmospheres of different countries." The inspiration for “Barcelona,” which can be heard in the Barcelona trailer, was “Guilia’s on-and-off relationship with the city,” a place she found a little too pricy to live. Not a problem for Allen, of course, who pronounces the song “perfect.” But don’t take his word for it; here’s a performance of the song from the Spanish talk show El Club.
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