Theory Thursday: the music of Cars

Theory Thursday

This one was brought to my attention while I was working at school. When talking about pixar movies and upcoming films, Cars 3 was brought up between me and a friend. Eventually we got to the question about how great Randy Newman’s score for the first film was. Then we asked the question “what if the music in cars is actually being played on the speakers within the car itself?” I was intrigued by the question, almost immediately accepted it into my head canon, and now I am looking into it to see if this theory would hold it’s own weight.

Welcome to Theory Thursday.

he he he, Elvis car.

Movie scores are usually unknown to the characters within the film and is only available to us as the audience to help further set the mood and pace for the scene. There is something particular about a lot of the music in cars though and that is that people are actually listening to it.

The first song- “Real Gone”- starts us off thinking about where the music would come from, we can say that it is a physical song that is playing in the audience during the scene as the “Elvismobile” was able to synchronize it’s lips to the song at one point on cue.

We do see an ambiance PA system in the stadium and one could argue that the music is coming from these, but this same thing happens again at the end of the movie during the epilogue scenes when mater is lipsyncing to “Route 66” (see video above, 45 seconds in).

As far as I can observe, the only speaker in the town is on the stereo that Lizzy is listening to (she being a model T ford does not have her own radio built in).

“Sha-boom” is performed on that radio at lizzie’s place during the cruise that McQueen set up. So we have much evidence that the music from the movie is “live” as far as the characters are concerned. 

One song in particular adds an interesting dynamic to the movie.

“The National Anthem” by Jimi Hendrix is not played on any visable stereo, and neither is Taps from Sarge.

"Will you turn that dis-respectful Junk Off!"
"respect the classics man, it's Hendrix."

not a lot of room for speakers here.

The kicker is in a comic book tie in to the movie that explains how Sarge and Fillmore ended up becoming friends and living in radiator springs. In the Cars universe, Woodstock took place on the outskirts of town and Sarge was sent by the government to keep everything under control. After one of the days of rallys, all the cars leave the area playing the classic Beatles Song “All You Need Is Love”. This proves that the cars in the movie do have working radios and that, if it isn’t played on a speaker, there is at least the option that the cars could be playing it on their radios.

What do you think? What is the anatomy behind Cars? Leave your comments below and may you have a great rest of your week.

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