Five David Lynch Songs That Could Soundtrack His Movies

Where he’s from, there’s always music in the air.

by Delia Pless

David Lynch is a surreal Renaissance man. He makes movies, obviously, but he's also a painter, photographer, weatherman, hip Parisian nightclub owner… and now he's a recording artist. Crazy Clown Time mixes brooding electronic beats with dusty blues, a whole lot of weird noises, and Karen O's sex sounds. The weird thing is, every song feels like it could be pllayed over a scene from Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, or Eraserhead. So here are five songs from Crazy Clown Time and the David Lynch scenes they should have been featured in.

1. Blue Velvet "Love Letters" scene + "Know"

In this lovely little scene, Jeffrey Beaumont finds his lover's husband and a local goon dead in a living room. Actually, the Yellow Man looks like he might still be alive, but that's a pretty small mystery compared to everything else that happens in this movie. The perfect song to go with this scene is "I Know." It's sort of slow and dark, and the lyric "I know you've got to go" would allude nicely tto the fact that Kyle MacLachlan is about to shoot Dennis Hopper in the face.

Listen: "I Know"

 

2. Lost Highway Garage Scene + "Stone's Gone Up"

Sexy scenes need sexy songs. And "Stone's Gone Up" is about as sexy as CCC gets. I'm not saying Lou Reed's "This Magic Moment" isn't a sexy song, but "Stone's Gone Up"' has more of a dark, garage-y kind of beat. And Lynch's whispering over the whole thing adds a nice touch of (extra) mystery to this garage scene when Balthazar Getty (Pete) sees Patricia Arquette (Alice Wakefield) for the first time.

Listen: Stone's Gone Up";

 

3. Cooper’s Dream sequence from Twin Peaks + ";Crazy Clown Time";

After a lot of deliberation, I've come to the conclusion that the title track from CCC really says "birds singing a pretty song and little man dancing backwards-forwards." "Crazy Clown Time" has the same sort of undulating motion as the little man in the red room from Cooper'svdream in the finale of Twin Peaks’ first season. They're also both incomprehensible in a really enjoyable way.

Listen: "Crazy Clown Time"

 

4. Opening credits for Mulholland Drive + "These Are My Friends"  

The high-pitched cowboy lilt Lynch uses in "These Are My Friends" and a few other songs on CCC, is, I’m convinced, actually the voice of the cowboy from Mulholland Drive. The mystery deepens! Plus the lyric "These Are My Friends" makes for a ironic introduction to the main characters in this decidedly unfriendly movie.

Listen: "These Are My Friends"

 

5. Eraserhead pencil factory scene+ ";Noah's Ark";  

The pencil factory scene from Eraserhead is probably one of the most abstractly unsettling David Lynch scenes. I can't pretend to know what's going on, but I'm not sure I want to. You could probably say that about everything David Lynch does, but it's especially true here. That's why I'd pair this scene with CCC's softly romantic "Noah's Ark." It would make this scene even more scary-confusing.

Listen: "Noah's Ark"