About two weeks ago, I was sitting in the theater at Metro Movies 12. The trailers started playing, beginning with an ad for “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3.” I was excited for it, of course, but an unexpected thought entered my head as I sat there and watched. While the trailer was playing, I realized that I was just as excited to hear the soundtrack for the movie as I was for the movie itself.

Director James Gunn has made his personal favorite songs a staple of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise. Whether it’s the opening of the first film, when Star-Lord pulls off a heist while blasting “Come and Get Your Love” on his Walkman, or in the subsequent sequel, when Groot plays “Mr. Blue Sky” on a speaker while the gang is fighting, there are examples through both films, but most of them remain consistent—they are all used diegetically. Diegetic music doesn’t just play along to the movie; it plays within the movie’s world, where the characters reside. One of my favorite examples of this is in “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2” in which a character massacres a ship of traitorous pirates in slow motion while “Come A Little Bit Closer” by Jay & the Americans plays on a speaker in the background.

Every time a character sings along to Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son” or Glen Campbell’s “Southern Nights,” it’s because that song is playing in the scene with them. It’s why music (mostly from the 70s) remains a central part of the series. And as I’ve watched more TV shows and movies, I’ve realized how many times these diegetic uses have played a hand in reviving a song’s popularity.

I know we all remember the insanity of Summer 2022, when “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush and Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” were both popular due to their usage in “Stranger Things.” Just a few months before, “The Batman” got more people to listen to Nirvana’s “Something in the Way.”

I don’t mean to imply that this is a new phenomenon. Anyone who saw the “Wayne’s World” movie can tell you how, at the movie’s release, its use of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” made the song wildly popular for the first time in over 15 years. This is a tool that a good director knows how to apply, and if used correctly it will introduce a new audience to a classic. As long as music and movies exist, this sensation will carry on. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone used Fun’s “Some Nights” in a pivotal emotional scene in 20 years, making a new generation appreciate it like we did.

However, just using a song in the background of a scene isn’t going to cut it. If a song plays to enhance the mood of a scene but isn’t explicitly tied to the setting and events taking place, you’re not likely to think much of it afterward. But if the song has a moment when the characters express their own emotional connection to it, that connection can spill out into the audience. In the case of “Stranger Things,” when the use of music was integral to the plot, specific events and emotions the characters were experiencing were linked to “Running Up That Hill.”

It’s here that the use of a diegetic song can become a conduit for the director’s or the writer’s own experience. By projecting the way the song makes them feel onto a character with a relatable and touching story, the audience’s love for the character’s story will merge with the song itself. In the third episode of HBO’s “The Last of Us,” Linda Ronstadt’s cover of “Long, Long Time” was used in a heart-wrenching diegetic context. And it had a specific connection to the characters in the episode. Early on, the characters played “Long, Long Time” on the piano. When the piece returned at the end to finish their emotional arc, viewers were left with that song in mind. By fundamentally connecting these people and their story to the song, listeners will think of the well-written love story they had just witnessed. The song soon received a 4900% streaming boost in popularity on Spotify alone.

If a director or writer has a genuinely touching and fantastic story to share, linking it with a song can transfer that appreciation for it onto the audience. Being able to get a younger generation to understand why a specific song is meaningful isn’t easy, but it can be done if handled properly.

Nate Wheeler can be reached at nwheeler@wesleyan.edu.