Every major awards show has a “Best Original Score” and a “Best Original Song” category, and most major critics’ groups at least give awards out for the former. But the landscape of movie soundtracks has changed drastically over the years, and the needle-drop is nearly as important. The Big Chill, Risky Business, Reservoir Dogs, Goodfellas, Guardians of the Galaxy, and a billion other examples I can’t be bothered to list out — the needle-drop is an essential part of modern cinema, and it’s so weird that nobody seems to acknowledge that fact as a part of their end-of-the-year coverage.
So, I’m out to change things. After a full year of seeing (most) major releases, I’ve selected ten movies that use ten non-original songs in truly transformative ways, and you might be surprised by what’s made it on the list. No, that Iggy Pop song from Superman didn’t cut, One Battle After Another got snubbed again, and I somehow wrote something positive about an Ari Aster movie. Yeah, this is a Best Needle Drops in Film in 2025 list, and all the rules have gone out the goddamn window. Let’s get to it:
After the Hunt — Everything But the Girl, ‘Nothing Left to Lose’
I was originally going to go with one of the two Smiths/Morrissey tracks here — Chloe Sevigny’s reaction to hearing them in a bar being the funniest part of a very witty movie — but I wound up choosing this closing credits track instead. Why? Well, it dovetails perfectly with the film’s themes (beyond “cancel culture” or whatever) and let me know that Tracy Thorn and Ben Watt released a new record after a lengthy hiatus. The EBTG career arc was already delightfully strange — Bossa Nova to electronica in the span of a decade — and this song proves they haven’t missed a step (and that Thorn’s already-gorgeous voice has only grown richer with time). Good going, Luca. Great choice.
Eddington — Katy Perry, ‘Firework’
It sucks that I can’t be friends with John Waters anymore because he chose to die on this Ari Aster hill, but maybe we can be pals if I say something nice about one scene from this awful motion picture. The closest it comes to working is because of this beautifully-placed track, which is featured in a set-piece that sees Joaquin Phoenix’s lead utterly humiliated following a confrontation with his arch-rival, Pedro Pascal, at a home fundraiser for the latter’s campaign. It’s the first time Aster’s sense of irony is really pointed in a reflection of the truth, as you better bet that the DNC’s status quo candidate would be blasting the shit out of this mid-ass tune over socially-distanced cold cut platters. The only other drop that might have worked as well is “Fight Song.”
F1 — Led Zeppelin, ‘Whole Lotta Love’
If there were patron saints for needle drops, Joseph Kosinski would be the one for “Done-to-death boomer tunes that defy gravity.” He somehow made “Won’t Get Fooled Again” work in Top Gun: Maverick without having the whole crowd doing David Caruso impressions, and he made this — the most obvious choice for a racing movie’s score, especially for a scene set at the 24 Hours of Daytona — absolutely land. Plant’s screaming, Page is wailing, Pitt’s fighting for first, and fireworks are lighting up the palm trees: the right ingredients for a great introductory sequence.
Freaky Tales — Metallica, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’
I was kind of cool on Ryan Boden and Anna Fleck’s Freaky Tales back when I saw it at Sundance in 2024, but, even then, I knew the film’s bloody climax would be an absolute hit among those who’d seek it out. You’ve got Golden State Warriors legend “Sleepy” Floyd dressing up like Wesley Snipes’ Blade in home-team colors, going after a bunch of white supremacists on the same night he dropped 51 on the Showtime Lakers in the ’87 playoffs. Dude suits up, grabs the katana, hits the road on the Sleepy-Cycle, and then takes care of business bloodily, all set to one of the hardest Metallica tracks of the post-Mustaine era. It’s just goddamn fun, and so… Oakland. The entire soundtrack’s a love letter to the Bay Area, and you can’t have that without the GOATs.
Marty Supreme — Public Image Ltd., ‘The Order of Death’
This is a placeholder entry – you will know my real selection within the first reel of Josh Safdie’s ping-pong epic – but I don’t want to ruin that laugh for you, so we’re going to go with John Lydon and company. “The Order of Death” is one of the most cinematic PIL songs, and watching Timothee Chalamet hit the ping-pong club, rolling past his pals under the harsh lights and stone floors, will make you want to do the exact same fuckin’ thing as soon as you leave the theater. It’s the best walking music of all time, and makes any errand or outing – getting dog food, paying a parking ticket at the police station, Christmas caroling, and so on – feel like it’s the coolest thing on Earth at that specific moment.
No Other Choice — Cho Yong-pil, ‘Redpepper Dragonfly’
I could have gone with Sam and Dave or one of the other tracks that Park Chan-wook chose for this feature – still the best film released in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty Five – but there really was… forgive the pun, no other choice than this deep cut from Korean jazz-pop impresario Cho Yong-pil. It plays over one of the best scenes of the year, in which Lee Byung-hun’s character goes to kill the first one of his “competitors” in the job market, a depressed, drunk audiophile with a wife as nutty as he is plastered. This is an actual needle drop – the turntable turns while the slapstick standoff that follows unfolds, perfectly in sync with the song’s changing rhythms. It’s the moment I knew it was something truly special, and this soundtrack choice made all the difference.
The Secret Agent — Donna Summer, ‘Love to Love You Baby’
Once or twice a year, we get a movie that tries to reinterpret disco-era sounds in an ironic light – in January, we got the lame-as-hell Companion trying to make Samantha Sang’s “Emotion” into horror-comedy soundtrack fodder – but we rarely have movies that acutely tap into the hidden textures of a disco track like “Love to Love You Baby.” As much as I love Donna Summer, this is an unimpeachably creepy song, and it took Kleber Mendonca Filho to put it in this stark light. He uses the song’s intro to score a sequence in which the stepfather-and-son hitman team makes their way along a rural Brazilian highway, with their headlights and taillights illuminating the road in pitch-black darkness. Neo-noir perfection right here, folks.
Sentimental Value — Labi Siffre, ‘Cannock Chase’
As illustrated a few times throughout this list, songs often serve as beautiful thesis statements in a soundtrack, and there are few moments of bittersweet ecstasy that land as well as this beautiful Labi Siffre cut, well-placed at the end of Joachim Trier’s dramedy. I can’t really spoil the circumstances for you, but let’s just say that this is a big part of what makes that conclusion worthy of the well-earned ugly cries from the other people in the theater. It’s just… so goddamned nice, man.
The Smashing Machine — Cleaners from Venus, ‘Corridor of Dreams’
There are few things funnier than imagining what it might have been like, back in the ‘80s, to tell Martin Newell that one of his mail-order Cleaners from Venus tracks would wind up as the closing track on the soundtrack for a Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson movie. Benny Safdie cued it up perfectly, too – the sounds of absolution, playing as Mark Kerr goes from sobs to smiles inside the locker room shower, realizing he lost the fight but won the battle. Also, this is the only song on the list with a good saxophone feature, so you know I had to put it on there just to rep the sax men out there.
Weapons — George Harrison, ‘Beware of Darkness’
The flip side to the “thesis statement” track is the mood-setter, and I doubt there was a better introduction to a major motion picture this year than the one in Zack Cregger’s Weapons, which presents to us the odd occurrences in the small town while George Harrison’s creepiest track from All Things Must Pass enhances the surreality. It’s slow, full of dread, and weirdly soulful – a tell that what entertainments that will follow are rooted in real pain. Weapons is a strangely powerful film, and it wouldn’t work nearly as well without this sound as a key component. Now we just have to find someone to do “My Sweet Lord” justice.