Music, it goes without saying, has immense emotional power for a lot of people. It can have--again, this is rather obvious, but bear with me--tremendous impact on a visual film sequence. I mean, think of the shower scene in Psycho, and how incomplete that would have been without Bernard Hermann's startlingly creepy score. A director's choice of music creates an entire atmosphere, and it's disorienting to watch such musically-involved scenes on mute. In short, they're much different, and oftentimes much less affecting to a viewer.
I first heard this song, "Love Letters," at the end of Blue Velvet by David Lynch. It's one of my all-time favorite movies. The song itself was originally sung by Ketty Lester, who has unfortunately descended into the footnotes of pop history. As for the song's place in the movie, I can't talk much about that relationship without spoiling the plot of the film. Suffice it to say that, incredibly, David Lynch unites big themes in the movie, like the idea of violence as a means of possession and control, simply by placing this innocent song alongside footage of a shoot-out between two opposing forces. The idea, from an earlier scene, is that a love letter and a bullet from a gun are nearly the same thing, which has a whole slew of complicated and intriguing implications for the relationship between desire and violence, if you ask me.
Of course, if you're hearing the song out of the context of Blue Velvet, and instead listen to it simply as a standalone piece, the experience is much different. It's much simpler, and sweeter, and comes across as little more than a sappy love song. But a good one. And there's a place in the world for sappy, sweet, simplistic love songs.
And if this is all too verbose, as I tend to be, watch Blue Velvet (if you aren't terribly put-off by representations of violence) and listen to this song. I promise, it's worth the small chunk of time you will spend.
-Ketty Lester, "Love Letters" (1962)
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