Mark Kermode tells us stories about music in movies

Mark Kermode tells us stories about music in movies

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold October 21, 2025 Duration: 40:41

The Graduate, Trainspotting, Jaws, Star Wars, Citizen Kane – films you can’t picture without thinking of the music. Mark Kermode has been gripped by the marriage of movie and soundtrack since Dougal and the Blue Cat (aged 6) and, with Jenny Nelson, has just published ‘Surround Sound: the Stories of Movie Music’. We talk to him here about…  

 

… Scorsese, Cameron Crowe, Sofia Coppola, Edgar Wright: the new generation “who grew up with a headful of not just music, but records”

 

… how John Williams is “the last Whistle Test composer”: two bars of ET, Jaws or Star Wars and you instantly know the film

 

… how “silent cinema was never silent” and his band the Dodge Brothers playing live soundtracks

 

… Butch Cassidy, Easy Rider, Blackboard Jungle … pioneers of the music video

 

… the genius of American Graffiti: “Lucas wanted it so marinated in music the town would sound like a pickle jar”

 

… how scores are recorded and edited and what happens when a director tells an orchestra he’s changed his mind

 

… “by the time each Lord of the Rings soundtrack reached New Zealand, Peter Jackson had re-cut the film”

 

… Forbidden Planet in 1956, the days when electronic scores weren’t real music

 

… Martha Reeves, Jonathan Richman and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver

 

… Tarantino’s kitsch use of “his own scratchy vinyl” and why Jonny Greenwood‘s There Will Be Blood is unique and exceptional

 

… plus the “atonal squonking” of the Exorcist and the greatest soundtrack of all time.

 

Order ‘Surround Sound: the Stories of Movie Music’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/mark-kermodes-surround-sound/mark-kermode/9781447230564


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There’s a particular kind of conversation about music that happens between friends who’ve spent a lifetime immersed in it-not as distant critics, but as participants in the culture. That’s the atmosphere you’ll find in Word In Your Ear, a podcast from Mark Ellen, David Hepworth, and Alex Gold. With a collective eighty years of writing and broadcasting for titles like Smash Hits and Mojo, and shows from "The Old Grey Whistle Test" to VH-1, they don’t just recount history; they unpack the stories behind it with the ease of a shared laugh. This podcast grew naturally from their work on the late, great magazine The Word, where they began recording over thirteen years ago, building a dedicated following who found something genuinely special in the mix. Each episode weaves together music, commentary, history, and interviews, moving seamlessly from deep-dive analysis of a seminal album to a frank chat with a surprising guest, all delivered with the warmth and wit of a late-night chat. It feels less like a formal show and more like you’ve been invited to pull up a chair in a room where the anecdotes are plentiful and the expertise is worn lightly. The result is a consistently engaging listen that treats music not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing part of our lives.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Word In Your Ear
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