Scorsese

To Lisa Robinson's list of great songs used by Scorsese, I'd like to add the piano coda from "Layla" during the scene where all the Lufthansa heist crew start turning up dead, and "Baby, I Love You," from GoodFellas.

They all laughed last year when I suggested that Three 6 Mafia's catchy "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," from Hustle & Flow, should get the Oscar for best song. Three 6 Mafia laughed loudest when they won. This year's most exciting movie song? Boston-based punk band Dropkick Murphys' "I'm Shipping Up to Boston," from the Martin Scorsese masterpiece The Departed. The song has an intensity that embodies the guts and energy of the movie and is another in a long list of music that the director—a renowned music fan—has brilliantly utilized in his work. He's made impeccable choices: the Ronettes in Mean Streets, Bernard Herrmann's Taxi Driver score, the Cavalleria Rusticana Intermezzo in Raging Bull, the Rolling Stones in GoodFellas, Mickey and Sylvia's "Love Is Strange" in Casino, just to name a few. The Dropkick Murphys number, originally on the band's 2005 CD, The Warrior's Code, was inspired by an unpublished Woody Guthrie lyric and has a hard-core bagpipe stomp that puts other bands who consider themselves punk rock to shame. It's included on the Departed soundtrack CD—along with songs from the Stones, the Beach Boys, the Band, Van Morrison, and LaVern Baker. Kudos to Scorsese.