It is the 98th Academy Awards this coming weekend, and so it’s time to dust off another suggestion thread that I’ve had ready to use for a while (the original thread was in October 2020), and look at songs about actors (and the odd director).

---

/amodelofcontrol.com now has a Patreon page, at this stage purely as a potential way of helping to cover the running costs of the site. There is absolutely no compulsion to do so: if you feel you can chuck a small amount to the site each month, that would be appreciated.

---

---

Certainly, either way, people in films that would often have been up for awards (and the subjects of these songs have had a great number of Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations and awards, never mind countless other awards).

As always, thanks to everyone that took the time to suggest songs and give me a ton of inspiration.

---

A quick explanation for new readers (hi there!): my Tuesday Ten series has been running since March 2007, and each month features at least ten new songs you should hear – and in between those monthly posts, I feature songs on a variety of subjects, with some of the songs featured coming from suggestion threads on Facebook.

Feel free to get involved with these – the more the merrier, and the breadth of suggestions that I get continues to astound me. Otherwise, as usual, if you’ve got something you want me to hear, something I should be writing about, or even a gig I should be attending, e-mail me or drop me a line on Facebook (details below).

---

/R.E.M.
/Man on the Moon
/Automatic for the People

---

Andy Kaufman had a tragically short life – he died of lung cancer aged just 35 in 1984 – but his chaotic brand of comedy and acting continues to cast a shadow over US comedy in particular decades on. His big break came in the early days of Saturday Night Live, which led to his landmark role, that of Latka Gravas in much-loved comedy series Taxi (a show that also catapulted Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd and Tony Danza to stardom, detailing the everyday lives of a fictional NYC taxi firm).

Fifteen years after his death, Jim Carrey took on the role of Kaufman (an obvious influence, particularly on his own, earlier chaotic film roles) in the brilliant biopic Man on the Moon. The title of the film came from the R.E.M. song released a few years before: one of the band’s greatest, most euphoric songs, which pays tribute to Kaufman by way of various references to his acting and skits (and Stipe even does his own, great Elvis impression). What I see as R.E.M.’s last classic song – The Great Beyond – came from the same well of inspiration, and was recorded for the soundtrack to the film.

---

/Nirvana
/Frances Farmer will have Her Revenge on Seattle
/In Utero

---

Frances Farmer is sadly better known for her mental health struggles and the various posthumous tussles over her alleged treatment, than for her acting ability – which various major names of the day suggested she was one of the best. There are a whole host of things to read, but this by Jeffrey Kauffman helps correct the record somewhat, it seems.

The travails of Farmer inspired one of Nirvana’s loudest, most forthright songs on In Utero, which rumbles with fury at the treatment of Farmer and in Cobain’s lyrics, willing her ghost to come back and exact terrible revenge on the city that adopted Nirvana (even if Cobain and Krist Novoselic were actually from Aberdeen, WA, on south-west of Seattle).

---

/Cornershop
/Brimful of Asha
/When I Was Born for the 7th Time

---

Remarkably the first appearance for Cornershop in this series, they are naturally here with their biggest hit, that was remixed by Norman Cook and turned into a cross-genre smash and a somewhat unexpected number one single. The song pays tribute to the legendary playback singer and actress Asha Bhosle, reputed to have recorded well over 10,000-12,000 songs for mostly Bollywood productions over a decades-long career (she’s still alive, aged 92), and was arguably better-known than some of the actors that lip-synced to her songs!

---

/Voodoo Queens
/Kenuwee Head
/Kenuwee Head EP

---

Probably the best-remembered song by the short-lived London Riot Grrrl band Voodoo Queens (although the ripping Supermodel Superficial from the same EP runds it close) celebrates actor Keanu Reeves – and the title plays on the fact that some people struggled to pronounce his name in the pre-internet days. There’s not a lot to the song, other than a bunch of references to him being cool and the various characters that he’d played by the point.

In more recent years, Reeves – aside from his lengthy list of hit films and era-defining roles, his musical career and making and riding custom motorcycles – has quietly been involved in various acts of philanthropy, from setting up private cancer foundations (after his sister battled leukemia), to spontaneous acts of kindness toward others that have settled medical bills and financial troubles, and a general sense that his is a quiet, thoughtful man who has used the trappings of fame to do good for others. And thus worth celebrating in song, that’s for sure.

---

/Salad
/Diminished Clothes
/

---

Italian director Federico Fellini was one of the most influential film directors, a visionary who made neorealist and fantastical films that made the mundane feel magical (and annoyed Italian authorities, censors and religious figures alike). He and is work is referenced on Salad’s debut single, a bass-heavy song a world away from the Britpop scene they’d eventually be lumped in with, and comments (obliquely) on the need for directors to have women in films wearing rather less than their male counterparts.

---

/Cinerama
/Lollobrigida
/Disco Volante

---

One of the stars of fifties and sixties cinema, and undisputedly one of the most beautiful women in cinema of the time (and reputedly missed out on a supporting role in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita by misplacing the script!), Gina Lollobrigida was a rare actress that managed successful careers after acting, with success as a photojournalist (and less success as an aspiring, conservative politician).

Cinerama were a side-project of David Gedge, away from his main band The Wedding Present, which as the name suggests was aiming for a more retro, cinematic sound, complete with orchestration and other instrumentation, and this song certainly meets that brief.

---

/Toto
/Rosanna
/Toto IV

---

Part of an film dynasty, Rosanna Arquette has been a familiar name in TV and film for decades now (alongside her siblings Patricia and David Arquette in particular), perhaps best known for Desperately Seeking Susan, Pulp Fiction and the notorious David Cronenberg take on Crash – not to mention being one of the first to speak out about Harvey Weinstein’s appalling sexual harassment.

But contrary to popular belief – although she did play along with it, as did the band – she is not specifically the subject of Toto’s massive, enduring 1982 hit, although seeing as she was dating the band’s keyboardist Steve Porcaro at the time, she may have been some of the inspiration…

---

/Pop Will Eat Itself
/Harry Dean Stanton
/The Looks or the Lifestyle?

---

Harry Dean Stanton was an actor for decades – and continued to work well into his eighties, before dying in 2017 aged 91. He was in a surprising number of films, but rarely in a lead role, until Wim Wenders cast him as Travis, the near-silent loner in the glorious Paris, Texas trying to piece his life back together after years apparently missing. It’s one of the best roles I’ve ever seen performed in film (one of the very few films I’d consider perfect, in fact).

That said, I’ve never been exactly sure why this Poppies song – from their transitional album The Looks or the Lifestyle?, that resulted in their only top-ten hit but also signposted their move into more industrial-rock textures on their next album – references the actor. Perhaps because it is a song about powerlessly watching societal breakdown, with not much to say to stop it, much as his character in Paris, Texas just takes whatever comes his way, good or bad.

---

/Self Deception
/Matthew McConaughey
/Destroy The Art

---

“Alright Alright Alright” – the first line we heard from Matthew McConaughey in the classic Dazed and Confused, the beginning of a career that has seen the Texan actor take on a variety of roles and, somehow, never quite saw him typecast (although he came close with a slew of romantic comedies for a while).

Swedish band Self-Deception did a gloriously fun, thumping rock song from a couple of years back that celebrates the actor, and seems to suggest that they want to live their life according to the actor. Whatever, I guess: the song absolutely slaps, though.

---

/TISM
/(He’ll Never Be An) Ol’ Man River
/Machiavelli and the Four Seasons

---

River Phoenix – the older brother of actor Joaquin Phoenix – died aged just 23 from a drug overdose, ending a burgeoning career that had begun when he was a child (including a role in the Stephen King adaptation Stand By Me).

Australian provocateurs TISM were inspired by the death of River Phoenix to comment on the darker, obsessive side of celebrity worship and blanket media coverage on the wild (He’ll Never Be An) Ol’ Man River, a song that was – perhaps unsurprisingly – completely misconstrued by people who should have known better…

---

/A Tribe Called Quest
/Midnight
/Midnight Marauders

---

There were, unsurprisingly, a number of songs suggested that reference Robert De Niro (not least Bananarama‘s early 80s hit Robert De Niro’s Waiting), but the litany of film and actor references in hip-hop needed to be covered here. Indeed, this isn’t the only reference to De Niro in hip-hop either, as Helmet and House of Pain reference him too on Judgement Night standout Just Another Victim.

A fantastic song that takes us on an after-dark walk through NYC nightlife from dusk ’til dawn, complete with a number of detailed, vivid character sketches that bring the world alive. As for that De Niro reference, remember Midnight Run? No? Me neither…