Twilight music

"Flightless Bird, American Mouth" is the name of the beautiful ballad that plays while Bella and Edward dance at the prom at the end of Twilight. I've heard the song many times because I have the soundtrack (thanks to Dawn) and of course I've watched the movie several times. I've always thought the song was so pretty. But of course I thought the title was rather bizarre, which is why I decided to check out the lyrics. They are even more at odds with the pretty tune and with the way the song was used in the movie (ultimate romantic scene where she agrees to be changed into a vampire at that exact moment and instead he just kisses her throat - swoon) than I had expected.

"Flightless Bird, American Mouth"
by Iron & Wine

I was a quick wet boy
Diving too deep for coins
All of your street light eyes
Wide on my plastic toys
And when the cops closed the fair
I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog-eared map
And called for you everywhere

Have I found you?
Flightless bird, jealous, weeping
Or lost you?
American mouth
Big pill looming

Now I'm a fat house cat
Cursing my sore blunt tongue
Watching the warm poison rats
Curl through the wide fence cracks
Pissing on magazine photos
Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean
Blood of Christ mountain stream

Have I found you?
Flightless bird, grounded, bleeding
Or lost you?
American mouth
Big pill, stuck going down

Holy shit!

I've been thinking more about the movie music because I've read a couple articles about the Eclipse soundtrack, including one in Rolling Stone magazine (June 24 issue). In that one, they said that 400 songs were submitted for the new sountrack album and a guy from Death Cab for Cutie is quoted as saying "how else are you going to get your music out there . . . radio is dead" (I'm paraphrasing). Music is not something I focus on a lot in movies (unless it's obnoxious or distracting), so thinking about it at all is sort of different for me. But like the actors and everything else associated with the movies, the musicians whose songs get into them get a huge boost from the association. There's even a genre, "Twilight rock," that refers to the indie/emo type music in the movies (I think I heard that on NPR).