David Lynch’s psychedelic musical taste has deeply influenced his cinematic style. I began re-exploring his approach to soundtrack and music composition from Twin Peaks.
On January 15, the day David Lynch passed away, I was in a Wa ethnic village on the border between Myanmar and China. The morning light struggled to break through the mist, and the scene resembled the remote town in Washington state from his famous series Twin Peaks. Although I had already seen all of Lynch's films and the third season of Twin Peaks(2017), it wasn’t until that moment that I realized I had never watched the first two seasons from 1990. So, being in a similarly remote and mysterious village, it seemed the perfect time to catch up.

The story begins with a close-up of a bird followed by a panoramic view of a factory, the first two shots of the opening sequence. The electronic strings, introduced by the harmonic overtones played on the guitar's low strings, set the suspenseful and mysterious tone for the story with the opening theme “Falling.” In contrast to his films, where Lynch uses music sparingly, the Twin Peaks series is almost entirely composed of atmospheric music. After the high school girl Laura Palmer’s body is discovered at the start of the plot, Laura Palmer’s Theme plays for the first time and quickly becomes the most frequently heard piece of music throughout the series, evoking a tragic sense of fate. Both of these theme melodies were composed by Angelo Badalamenti, who not only earned a Grammy for his Twin Peaks score but also composed for Lynch’s films Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, The Straight Story, and Mulholland Drive.
As a latecomer to the first season, I feel Lynch was almost impatient to showcase his unique musical taste through the series. In the first episode of season one, around 1 hour and 15 minutes in, during the scene at the Road House bar, the female singer Julee Cruise performs the opening song "Falling," written by Lynch himself—its lyrics were originally scribbled on a napkin on set. This is followed by "The Nightingale," a song that continues the melodic motifs of "Laura Palmer’s Theme" but with a slightly more upbeat rhythm. It's worth noting that Twin Peaks was created in the early 1990s, a time when the ethereal wave music, epitomized by the record label 4AD, was at its peak. The two songs in this bar scene bear a striking resemblance to works from the ethereal wave bands Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star, both active around the same time.

David Lynch confidently believed that "the music of Twin Peaks is an indispensable part of the viewing experience”. As a result, the series deeply influenced some musicians. When the series aired, Nine Inch Nails had been formed for just two years. Trent Reznor, the band's leader, recalled that on one occasion, the band postponed a performance to ensure they could watch the latest episode of Twin Peaks on time. "We knew what mattered," he said. Trent Reznor later became an important collaborator with David Lynch, producing the soundtrack for Lost Highway and even making an appearance in the long-awaited third season of Twin Peaks in 2017.
The first David Lynch film I saw was Lost Highway in 1997. The catalyst was music, but it was music unrelated to his films. That year, the British trip-hop band Portishead had just released their self-titled album. Fascinated by the electronic, psychedelic atmosphere of their sound, I came across a review titled "Portishead, Lost Highway" and that's how I learned about the film Lost Highway and its director, David Lynch. I quickly rented the DVD. While Portishead’s music clearly suited the film’s atmosphere, Lynch didn’t use it. At the time, I was in high school and completely unable to comprehend the strange and chaotic nature of the film. The protagonist of the film is also a musician—a jazz player portrayed by Bill Pullman—but during the opening scene of a high-speed drive on a dark highway, the soundtrack features David Bowie’s lesser-known song "I’m Deranged," which sets a tone of panic and fear for the film.
Together with Angelo Badalamenti, Trent Reznor was responsible for the soundtrack of Lost Highway. Using a white noise generator, Reznor brought a strange sense of comfort to many scenes in the film. He recalled that Lynch would casually draw something on a piece of paper in the studio, like a star, and then say, "I really want it to sound like this."

David Lynch seemed to have an innate sense of what "sounds like something" since his childhood. In Boise, Idaho, on a September day in 1956, a childhood friend ran up to the 10-year-old Lynch and told him he had just missed Elvis Presley’s important performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Missing this rock milestone, Lynch began to sketch out his own fantasy version of Elvis and the birth of rock 'n' roll in his mind.
By 1986, while shooting Blue Velvet, Lynch couldn’t afford his favorite version of "Song to the Siren" by This Mortal Coil. As a result, the director turned to composer Angelo Badalamenti, asking him to create a new song with a similar feeling. Lynch handed Badalamenti a simple note that read "Mysteries of Love," later adding, "Make the music sound like the tide hitting the shore, endless and unbroken, and find a voice like an angel’s." Julee Cruise then came in, and "Mysteries of Love" was born, perfectly capturing the atmospheric feeling the director had envisioned.

It seems that anyone who could understand Lynch’s scribbles and doodles on paper could become his best "mouthpiece." Of course, such a telepathic connection between artists is rare. The director who could play a bit of guitar sometimes couldn’t resist stepping in himself. In 2001, with an album BlueBOB, a collaboration with John Neff, Lynch developed a personal style by "playing upside down, like a lap guitar," but he heavily relied on pedal effects to create the atmosphere. For “Inland Empire”, Lynch even composed two songs for the soundtrack, and for the first time, he sang on the track "Ghost of Love." Later, he fully embraced his musician side, releasing two solo studio albums, Crazy Clown Time and The Big Dream. Honestly, I don’t think they are of particularly high quality—more like a fun side project. After all, once you’ve built a formidable reputation in cinema, other hobbies tend to be pursued and praised by followers.
In my view, Lynch’s creative and performing talent in music is quite limited, but his unique and refined taste, along with his crucial artistic intuition, always allow him to quickly establish a dreamlike tone for his films through various music styles, from jazz and blues to psychedelic rock. This, in turn, creates beautiful nightmares for his audience.
Waking up again in this border Wa ethnic village, it was another fog-covered morning. Villagers were burning fields in the mist, and thick smoke rose, cutting through the fog to form a giant question mark in the sky between the mountains. I thought of the title “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” and the mourning words left by the family: "There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say,’ Keep you eye on the donut and not on the hole.’”

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