Kevin Morby picks 4 movies to pair with ‘Little Wide Open’
In Pairings, artists and creators pick the movies that complement their latest work.
Kevin Morby is a folk rock musician and singer/songwriter. A former member of Woods and The Babies, he has released several solo albums including Harlem River, Still Life, Singing Saw, and This Is a Photograph. His new album Little Wide Open is available on May 15 wherever you get your music!
We asked Kevin to pick a few movies that pair well with Little Wide Open. Here’s what he wrote about them.
Lucky
This is a really moving film starring the late great Harry Dean Stanton. He plays a character named Lucky, but is essentially playing himself. It’s his last film and he died not long after it. There’s a line on my new album basically quoting a scene from the film about smiling and accepting one’s fate. In his case, a life so long he just has to live it ‘til the wheels fall off even though everyone he knows is gone.
Badlands
This film is a bottomless well of inspiration. It’s inspired other albums of mine, both sonically and visually but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t also a source of inspiration for this one, too. Takes all kinds.
American Honey
This film does a great job at depicting midwest American suburbs in Missouri and Kansas, exactly where I’m from—so I know a lot about it. There’s this wonderful scene where a van full of delinquent runaways are all singing the song “American Honey” by Lady Antebellum. The juxtaposition of this overproduced country pop song being sang by these criminal kids in unison is so moving to me. That scene somehow captures exactly how being from small-town America feels; being in a dirty van with your friends while pop songs come through the radio, beaming in from a different reality. I was thinking about it a lot while making this album.
Mad Max
I got obsessed with the Mad Max franchise around writing Little Wide Open and so a lot of my demos have screaming and explosives in the background. I listened to the demos so much I started to miss the sounds of Mad Max playing in the background. So in a way when I hear my album, I’m always thinking of the Mad Max films.