Song of the Week w/c 28th July 2025

When I left off writing last week, I thought I'd come back this week and write more about songs featured in movies and discuss some of my favourites. And maybe I still will do this later, but this week I only want to talk about music from one movie. We're talking Mishima today.

Have I watched the film? No, don't be silly. How did this come into my head? Well, through Bob's Burgers and Northernlion. The normal ways. I heard our good friend NL mention Mishima earlier this week and thought, "Isn't that the Phillip Glass soundtrack that bangs?" and indeed, it was. GOD it's so good. I'm mostly referring specifically to the track MISHIMA/Closing, although the rest of the soundtrack is great too. I just keep putting the song on and then listening to it 5-25 times in a row. It's so good. It makes me feel like my heart is bursting out of my body. You HAVE to listen to it in headphones, please, to get the proper experience. The layering of the violins is just sooo exquisite and so beautiful, I love it so much.

Oh, yeah, the Bob's Burgers thing. My family are big Bob's Burgers watchers. It is relentlessly funny but also shockingly sweet. In last years' Christmas episode, Gene's class play an impossibly sophisticated xylophone piece, and it was so gorgeous it maybe made me cry. My dad, a big Phillip Glass fan, said surely it sounded just like a Phillip Glass song --- and he was right! What fun, to stumble across a wonderful arrangement of MISHIMA/Closing in my animated sitcom. This version of Mishima has additional layers, and my favourite feature --- briefly stopping the song and then starting it up again. I actually have cried again listening to it multiple times this week, which is probably only 50% related to the whole hormones thing. While both versions have their merits, I think I may well like this one better, so I'm making it my song of the week.

If you, too, enjoyed this song a lot and would like to listen to more Phillip Glass, I will share with you the playlist my dad made for me with his favourite tracks. He's such a fantastic composer which so much breadth, from the soaring and familiar piano melodies of Glassworks to the twisting and turning of ragas in Passages with Ravi Shankar. My favourite of these songs is Serra Pelada from Powaqqatsi. As my dad told me, it's not classic Glass, but it's so so much fun. I like the familiar sounds of samba music rolled into the track. My dad saw this performed live in the 80s, with the movie played over the top of it. He says this song, the opening, plays over a long scene of men working in a goldmine in Brasil, a big sweeping scene of men hauling dirt up the mountainside. So there you go, you can imagine that over the top.

I hope some lovely Glass is just what you needed, and I have thought about him and these songs a lot this week, so let me know if you like any and I have additional facts to share 😁.

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