FM Radio and the New Hollywood Soundtrack

Abstract

In studio production between the mid-1960s and early 1980s, the period often referred to as “New Hollywood,” the music soundtrack was the site of significant upheaval. As box office revues continued to plummet, the studios allowed filmmakers greater freedom to experiment with narrative structures and with soundtrack conventions. Specifically, they allowed directors to exert new control over film music, which they did often by jettisoning new composed orchestral scores in favor of compilations of preexisting, recorded music. Film music scholars have long acknowledged this shift, but few have recognized the degree to which the new soundtrack practices that emerged in the New Hollywood period were also the result of radical shifts in popular music and contemporary listening practices. By looking at two films from the early 1970s, Zabriskie Point (1971) and The Strawberry Statement (1970, this article considers the degree to which progressive rock, FM radio, and countercultural listening practices changed not only the content of film soundtracks but also the placement of music in film, unseating long-standing sound hierarchies and privileging music in new ways.