by There’s always been an intrinsic association between the worlds of film and music. Even though both mediums offer two different artistic experiences, it isn’t out of the question to have music serve as the primary inspiration behind a particular scene, saying something with sound that no kind of visual could express. Although Brad Pitt has been able to make moviegoers feel something every time he comes onscreen, he thinks that one rock band is as essential to the human experience as any classic film.
Then again, Pitt has always been an avid fan of music, considering how well it plays into his filmography. While there may be a gritty story taking place in front of the camera in a movie like Seven, for instance, what sucks the audience intends to come from the accompanying score and soundtrack music, including pieces of industrial rock that make everything feel tense.
That kind of filmmaking wasn’t just a one-off for Pitt, either. Throughout his work with directors like Quentin Tarantino, Pitt would be onscreen to the soundtrack of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. While Tarantino’s story was already a love letter to the Hollywood of days gone by, the music is just as vital to the scenes, including various shots where Pitt is driving in his car to the hits of the late 1960s.
Outside his career, Pitt has also kept up a healthy dose of rock and roll. When discussing his favourite artists, Pitt would single out singers like Chris Cornell as among the greatest in their field, thinking that his raspy wail tapped into something far more guttural than what the rest of the Seattle scene would be able to muster.
Though Pitt may have secured his start during the era of grunge and alternative rock, one of rock’s true innovators was hiding in plain sight. Despite rising to the top of the charts in 1993 with their hit ‘Creep’, Radiohead would sculpt themselves into a completely different band across their career, making albums that felt like works of art like OK Computer.
Even when the band had the whole world in the palm of their hand, they always chose to do things on their own terms, making a pivot into electronic music with Kid A before returning to their rock roots with In Rainbows. Regardless of the musical style, Pitt could respect the pure emotion that could be articulated every time they performed.
When discussing the emotional power of their music, Pitt thought that the band tapped into something far more visceral than anything he’d ever heard, saying, “What comes out in them, I don’t think is anything they could actually articulate, but I would certainly say that it’s that which we all know is true somewhere when we’re in our deepest sleep”.
Radiohead have never looked back from that mentality, either, using each of their albums as a new creative endeavour to try and twist their audience’s heartstrings in just the right direction to express what they feel in their hearts. While Radiohead might get the reputation for being a cerebral rock band, Pitt understands that it’s about what the music does inside someone’s soul rather than passively moving across their eardrums.
