MovieChat Forums > Light Sleeper (1992) Discussion > Horrible Music

Horrible Music

posted 19 years ago by jotaro-9
28 replies | jump to latest

I just saw Light Sleeper for the first time. The music by Michael Been is awful. The lyrics are worse. Alternately maudlin, pretentious, and horribly obvious, at least as far as relating to what the characters are going through. I can't think of a more glaring case of a score almost ruining a movie since Michael Mann's Thief.

But at least some of the electronic music TD did for Thief worked. On the commentary with Mann and James Caan, right at the beginning, Caan says, "Oh, Michael...Tangerine Dream, what a headache." But every time a song starts in Light Sleeper, I was groaning and saying shut the f uck up! SO obvious, SO wannabe deep, it's atrocious. Thief is a much better movie, but LS is pretty good, but almost submarined by this hack, especially the endurance test of an opening theme. I can't believe the only other thing on this board is about the so-called "hauntingly beatiful song at the end".

[–] Xcalat3 16 years ago

I was about to say the same thing the music nearly ruined this movie

When there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...

[–] GuyOnTheLeft 12 years ago

My god, yes--so awful! It's hard to tell if the movie might have been better had it been scored differently. Many scenes come across as so melodramatic and cheesy, but that in-your-face score could definitely be causing a lot of that. I kept thinking I was stuck in some horrible VH-1 music video from the '80s, or a Budweiser commercial from that era, like there would be a sax player on a dark street corner, with steam coming up from a grate...LOL.

[–] GruesomeTwosome 8 years ago

Agreed on the music for Light Sleeper, disagreed on the Tangerine Dream score for Thief (that was awesome, and it worked). But yes, whenever Michael Been started up during a scene in Light Sleeper, it was often eye-roll inducing. I would have been fine with just the music itself (instrumental only), but Been's overwrought vocals and insipid lyrics were not a good fit.

Fighting the frizzies, at 11.