Tiny Dancer - Best use of song ever?

ok...tiny dancer is one of my favorites but another two that haven't been mentioned are:

the opening of "midnight cowboy" - Everybody's talkin

"Color of money" - werewolves of london AND its in the way that you use it.

someone mentioned sweet emotion in "dazed and confused" - I also have to add slow ride at the end of the movie.

One that has stuck with me for a lot of years is "Don't Fear the Reaper" in Halloween...

There are way better examples, but that's the one that always comes to mind right away for some reason..

I don't have a favorite personally - there's so many in film history. But its definitely pretty fitting

Johnny B. Goode in Back to the Future.

Some of my favorites:
Ooh Child-Boyz n the Hood
Great loss of innocence scene by Singleton.
Into the Fire/Monkey Man-Goodfellas
Coke induced paranoia scene done perfectly by Scorsese.
Stuck in the Middle-Reservoir Dogs
Jaunty, upbeat pop to be brutal by from Tarantino
American Girl-Silence of the Lambs
Chubby plain girl going of to meet Buffalo Bill from Demme

A great director can really frame a scene with the right piece of music. Using something you are already familiar with makes it even more special. I can't hear any of the above mentioned songs without recalling these fantastic scenes.

Great thread, lots of really fine input. Though it's been several years and many many responses, I'm so surprised that no one mentioned Bill Withers "Ain't No Sunshine" in the Notting Hill scene where Hugh Grant walks through the outdoor market as the seasons change and he's trying to forget the girl, just lovely. As effective and moving as Tiny Dancer is in AF.




"To me you are the teacher in a Charlie Brown cartoon"

I didn't think it was a particularly apt song to go in there. It was a powerful scene because it showed them all coming together.

I think a more powerful scene was in Magnolia, when all the characters where singing along with that Amiee Mann song on the radio. It's different, for sure, in that they were all in different places but that was kind of the point - they were all lonely but connected in mysterious and profound ways. And I think that song fit better than Tiny Dancer in AF.

Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate.

"You must remember this/A kiss is still a kiss...."

Not sure about "popular" - wikipedia, that handy ever-reliable source of quasi information, describes it as a minor hit - but the greatest use of a pre-existing song, ever, was unqeustionably "As Time Goes By" in Casablanca. So integral to the movie it is hard to believe that it was not only not written for the movie, it was in the movie only by accident: the composer for the movie wanted to replace it with a song he had written, but Bergman had cut her hair for another part and was not available for reshoots.

If anything is close, it is Gene Kelly dancing in the heavy California dew in "Singin' in the Rain", which also pre-existed the movie by 23 years, and had been a hit and had been used at least 4 times in the movies before. And, of course, a few times after.

Also very fond of "Dues", a song Ronee Blakely wrote and recorded before Nashville but which so perfectly sums up her character's predicament it is almost impossible to believe it was not specifically written for her.

Oh, and yes "Tiny Dancer" works great here. Links up later with Penny Lane dancing alone in a deserted auditorium later in the movie.

Datta, dayadhvam, damyata.