What’s Your Favorite David Lynch Musical Moment?
No director used sound and music in such a specifically eerie way.
I think differently because of David Lynch. As a teenager in the 1990s, I didn’t have the language to express the strangeness of my suburban surroundings—the monotony, the conservatism, the repression—but I knew something was off. Watching DVDs of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet gave me that language and articulated those feelings in the most rewardingly fucked-up way possible. His work made me feel like it was OK to have strange thoughts and dreams, to be fascinated by the underbelly of society while also appreciating the beauty of the world around me. Mulholland Drive gave me nightmares. The Straight Story made me cry. And I’m already planning my rewatch of Twin Peaks: The Return just so I can live in Lynch’s world for a few more hours again.
The filmmaker was also a songwriter and musician who, alongside collaborators like Angelo Badalamenti and Dean Hurley, created distinct songs and sound worlds that only accentuated his uncanny aesthetic. Along with the soundtracks to his movies, Lynch released a few solo albums, and his entire oeuvre has likely inspired just as many musicians as it has filmmakers over the years. The memorable musical moments in his work are everywhere. For my money, Badalamenti’s gauzy Twin Peaks theme is the greatest in TV history. (The composer’s musical explanation of how he and Lynch worked together is still one of the greatest videos on YouTube.) There’s the use of David Bowie’s “I’m Deranged” at the start of Lost Highway. (By the way, if you haven’t seen Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, it’s worth it for the Bowie cameo alone.) The haunting Spanish version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” in Mulholland Drive. And all those performances at the end of each episode of The Return, where musicians including Chromatics, Sharon Van Etten, and Nine Inch Nails took the Roadhouse stage and paid their respects. The Return also featured a musical performance from the OG Twin Peaks character James Hurley, who reprised his song “Just You” from the original series.
“Just You” was first featured on the ninth episode of Twin Peaks, which debuted in 1990, and has since gained a reputation as one of the show’s most notorious moments. In the scene, the James Dean-like Hurley sits in his girlfriend Donna Hayward’s living room and strums out this uncomfortably heartfelt song directly to Donna and their friend Maddy Ferguson, whom James is also falling for. (Maddy is Laura Palmer’s cousin, played by the same actress, and James was Laura’s secret lover—it’s all very soap-opera insane.) The two women are staring at him from the living-room floor, singing backup. It’s hilariously over-the-top, but also weirdly poignant.
The song is a ballad in the style of Lynch faves like Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers, and Lynch wrote its lyrics. (Legend has it the guitar part was played by punk hero John Doe of the band X.) “Just you and I,” sings Hurley into an old-fashioned microphone, in a keening falsetto, “together, forever, in love.” His smolder is at 11, while the two women are looking up at him like he’s an actual pop icon. In the 1950s, it’s the sort of scene that would have been taken at face value; in 1990, there was some irony involved, but it doesn’t read like a total goof to me. It’s genuinely sweet, a pure expression of what so much pop music aims to do—express the cringey wonder of what it feels like to be a teenager in love. It’s the first musical moment that came to mind when I heard of Lynch’s passing. It will not be the last.
So what’s your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!
Also, as a little bonus, paying subscribers can listen to about five minutes of a phone interview I did with Lynch in 2010, around the time he was releasing his electronic single “Good Day Today”—the song opens with Lynch’s heavily effected voice singing, “So tired of fire, so tired of smoke.” I remember being nervous about the interview—this is David Lynch!—but he couldn’t have been kinder, gushing about the artists he loves and the role music plays in his work in that flat, aw-shucks voice. I’ll always cherish the moment in the interview when I asked him if he’d ever consider singing his own songs live on stage. “No, no, no,” he said with a chuckle. “Why not? It could be fun,” I teased, to which he responded, “Yeah, it’d be fun for you, baby!” David Lynch called me “baby.” What more could you ask for?
