Music is vital to Sofia Coppola’s films. For her, music is much more than uplifting the emotional impact of a scene. Sometimes, it’s used to speak for her characters. Yes, Coppola picks songs she likes, but there’s an intentionality to her movie soundtracks that sets her apart from other directors. She’s known for her “cool songs” soundtracks. But what makes them great is they sound like the perfect mixtape made by a friend with really good taste in music.
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Film music is another kind of aesthetic. It’s a choice that represents the character or the general atmosphere of a movie. But a great soundtrack can also stand alone as a great album. The standalone listening experience is something Coppola is conscious of. It’s why she didn’t release an album soundtrack to Somewhere, a film with sparse music placement.
Listen along to Coppola’s dreamscapes and the finest music moments of her filmography.
5. Priscilla (2023)
Elvis Presley’s estate didn’t grant Coppola the rights to his music for the film Priscilla, so she turned the restriction into something more intimate and original. Coppola’s husband, Thomas Mars, and his band Phoenix were the film’s music supervisors. With the choice of Elvis’ music unavailable, Coppola and Mars put Priscilla Presley at the center of her own story—something she never had in her husband’s lifetime. “Baby, I Love You,” a Ronettes cover by the Ramones, opens the film, and like her other work, she uses the music to immediately drop the audience into the film’s atmosphere. The modern original compositions of Sons of Raphael merge perfectly with the Soul Stirrers’ spiritual “Wade in the Water.” The changing musical periods echo the isolation and fragmentation of Priscilla Presley’s life.
4. Somewhere (2010)
On Somewhere, Coppola reveals the loneliness hiding behind fame. The soundtrack includes Phoenix, Foo Fighters, The Strokes, and Gwen Stefani. Phoenix was tasked with creating more music like their song “Love Like a Sunset.” Like Coppola’s other films, the music is not incidental. She picked songs the characters would actually listen to in the scene, like when the Foo Fighters’ “My Hero” plays on a boom box in the hotel room while twins perform an awkward pole dance for Johnny Marco, the successful Hollywood actor whose life is feeling empty. The Strokes’ demo “I’ll Try Anything Once” highlights how the perfect song can create a mood for a film sequence.
3. Marie Antoinette (2006)
The Marie Antoinette soundtrack is a post-punk and new-wave heaven with Siouxsie and the Banshees, New Order, and The Cure. Antoinette was the last queen of France before the French Revolution disposed of her. Coppola modernizes the period piece to humanize the historical characters. “Natural’s Not in It” by Gang of Four opens the film, signaling this biopic will be very different. This 1979 post-punk song could be the perfect soundtrack to Antoinette’s excessive parties. However, the left-leaning politics of Gang of Four could also foreshadow the impending revolution led by the angry rioters at Versailles.
2. Lost in Translation (2003)
Coppola’s romantic melancholy Lost in Translation enlists My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Phoenix to produce a soundtrack that perfectly exudes the jet lag and disorientation of a midlife crisis in Tokyo. Sébastien Tellier’s “Fantino” sounds like the suffocation in the main characters’ unhappy marriages. Coppola stunts the hope of a possible new romance with frustration by combining shoegaze and dream-pop into a technicolor knot. Bill Murray’s character is leaving Tokyo soon, and time is running out. “Are You Awake?” by Shields sounds hopeful, and what, exactly, does Murray whisper to Scarlett Johansson at the end? The “goodbye” scene ends with The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey,” and it is a glorious moment in the film.
1. The Virgin Suicides (1999)
On Coppola’s 1999 debut, the French electronic duo Air composed a hazy and darkly atmospheric score. The opening track, “Playground Love,” features Phoenix singer Thomas Mars (then Coppola’s future husband). Air makes French space-pop that sounds like a moon safari with Burt Bacharach on a Moog synthesizer, propelled forward by 1970s ultra-dry drums. On the companion soundtrack featuring additional artists, Coppola hits the mood of mid-’70s Detroit suburbs—and the Lisbon sisters’ imprisonment by overprotective parents—with Heart’s “Magic Man” and “Crazy on You.” Air’s electropop—drawn from The Dark Side of the Moon and Abbey Road—splices between ’70s rock radio staples Styx and Todd Rundgren. The film’s title gives away the ending, but the real story is why the sisters did it.
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