In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing. This week, in honor of our best films of 2013, songs we discovered through movies.
Stories about Wes Anderson nearly always reference the director’s obsessive attention to minute visual detail. A doorknob is worn just so, or there’s a Monopoly building hanging from the string of a closet light. But he’s clearly just as interested in the music that goes into his movies, as should be evident from the fantastic soundtracks that accompany them. And while Anderson’s included plenty of fairly well-known songs throughout his films, he’s also helped re-introduce the world to some terrific obscurities. One of the first was by The Creation, a British band known best not for its sound but for its guitarist, Ronnie Wood, who went on to join The Rolling Stones. But Anderson apparently liked the band’s Who- and Kinks-flavored Brit-rock enough to include the 1966’s “Making Time” at the beginning of Rushmore, in the text-assisted montage that introduces Max Fischer’s various extracurricular activities (from debate team captain to calligraphy club president, etc). It was a brilliant choice, because it not only fits perfectly with many of the other film’s songs (The Stones, The Kinks, The Who), but also sounds incredibly familiar, as great pop songs frequently do. It doesn’t hurt that the scene uses 75 seconds of the song—far more than just a snippet—or that the music accompanies the type of scene (including the Futura font!) that would become one of Anderson’s many calling cards.