Category Archives: song of the day

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Song of the Day #4,994: ‘Tonight’ – Rachel Zegler and Ansel Elgort

Continuing my recap of the 2021 movie year, this week I will present my personal nominees and winners for Best Director, Best Actor and Actress, and Best Supporting Actor and Actress. I have now caught up with almost every movie on my watchlist, so I’m pretty confident these lists won’t change.

Before I start, I’d like to shout out a couple of additional musical movie moments that I hadn’t yet seen when writing last week’s posts.

One is the ‘Wherever I Fall‘ sequence in Cyrano, which depicts doomed soldiers singing their final letters home. It’s the film’s best song and best scene, a powerful use of music to plumb the depths of despair.

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Song of the Day #4,993: ‘Campus’ – Vampire Weekend

It’s been more than two years since I last featured a Vampire Weekend song on the blog — a whole pandemic!

It’s been just shy of three years since the band released a new album. 2019’s Father of the Bride, their fourth release, was the first without founding member and co-songwriter Rostam Batmanglij. The left lead singer Ezra Koenig to carry the creative weight, a role he seemed to relish.

But no new music since.

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Song of the Day #4,992: ‘The Beehive State’ – Harry Nilsson

This is the second appearance of ‘The Beehive State’ on the blog. The first was by the song’s writer, Randy Newman, and was posted without comment during a week when my family was on vacation in Utah.

Today’s version is from Harry Nilsson’s 1970 album Nilsson Sings Newman, which found the successful singer-songwriter covering songs by a then relatively unknown Randy Newman.

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Song of the Day #4,991: ‘Both Sides Now’ – Emilia Jones

My final selection for best musical moments in a 2021 film comes from another movie I’ll be writing about in more detail later this month — CODA, the second feature from writer/director Sian Heder.

CODA is the story of Ruby, a hearing daughter of deaf parents who develops a passion for singing that doesn’t fit her parents’ expectations. It’s an oft-told tale of a young person fighting to forge an identity outside of a constrictive environment, but given a fresh and emotionally resonant twist.

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Song of the Day #4,990: ‘Dos Oruguitas’ – Sebastián Yatra

Last month, I spent a week on songs from the Disney hit Encanto, the soundtrack of which has become an unlikely chart-topper.

The movie features some excellent tunes, beautifully animated, including the pop culture phenomenon ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ and ‘Surface Pressure,’ a catchy anthem for the over-burdened.

I covered five standout tracks, but I left one out so I could include it in this week’s lineup of my favorite musical moments in the films of 2021.

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