I heard a podcast discussion recently that included the topic of music in films. One of the presenters offered the view that when songs accompany key scenes on the screen, it creates an opportunity for listening in a more emotionally focused way than any other. We may connect with a song on the radio, or as part of a playlist or an album, but when it's immersed in a moment of drama the song’s impact becomes more profound, more emotionally direct. In a normal musical setting it might command our attention, but as part of a dramatic narrative, it gets our full sympathetic attention. Put another way (to borrow the presenter's phrase), we fall harder for music in that context than in any other. I’ve tried to use the music that runs through Dead Man Singing in a similar way, although in the absence of a film version (I’m open to offers), it doesn’t necessarily have quite the same impact (yet).

I can remember a scene in the Sean Penn film The Interpreter when we first meet Penn’s Tobin Keller. He walks into a crowded, noisy bar and pulls the plug on the jukebox, silencing whatever rowdy rock number was playing. He then plugs it back in and selects a new song with a much milder vibe. It possibly helped that his chosen tune, Lyle Lovett’s ‘If I Had a Boat’, is a particular favourite of mine, but the sense of peace and the character’s desperation to find it was striking.

Sometimes the film version casts a shadow that a song finds impossible to shake off. The podcast went on to discuss the way that Kubrick’s use of Al Bowlly’s ‘Midnight, the Stars and You’ in The Shining gave that song a sinister connotation that was never present in the original, but which is now impossible for anyone who has seen the film to leave behind. I also remember putting together some Easter-themed drama workshops when I was a church Youth Worker, and being charged with finding suitable accompanying music. One of my co-leaders suggested an instrumental track from Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, unaware that for much of the population, that particular tune would forever be associated with the film The Exorcist. Suffice to say, we went with a different choice.

Featuring in a film doesn’t only give a song a new lease of life, it can revitalise careers too, propelling artists back into the charts long after they have ceased to expect such commercial success. Kate Bush’s 'Running Up That Hill' enjoyed the benefits of this phenomena a few years ago when it was featured in the Netflix series Stranger Things. The great second act of Nick Drake’s career, arguably the point where he deservedly received the broad acclaim that eluded him during his life, came after 'Pink Moon' was featured in a Volkswagen advert in 1999, some 25 years after the artist’s death. For what it’s worth, I spent a long time agonising over whether to make Dave Masters a Nick Drake fan, but decided that with Dead Man Singing set some nine years before that VW-driven resurgence it would be more realistic to number Dave with the many who missed out on Drake, despite the latter’s many connections to Dave’s hero Richard Thompson.