Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Cruella.You can see a ton of money thrown at the screen in Cruella, a gaudy, fashionable, production-designed-within-an-inch-of-its-life live-action origin story of the infamous 101 Dalmatians villain. But you can hear even more.
I don't know how much money Cruella music supervisor Susan Jacobs (Promising Young Woman, I, Tonya) had to spend on all the needle drops for the film's soundtrack. But given the level of A-list artists being represented, and the wall-to-wall, nearly self-parodic volume of songs heard within the 134-minute run time, I have to imagine it was quite a damn lot. But beyond these songs' value in terms of licensing fees, how do they work to tell the creative story of Cruella?
To find out, we've ranked all 33 needle-drops — yes, there are 33 individual, pre-existing songs plopped into the tapestry of the film — from least to most effective. A few caveats before we begin: The original song "Call Me Cruella" by Florence and the Machine was not included as it's not a pre-existing song, the performance of The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" was not included as it's performed live within the universe of the film, and a few songs have been melded together to represent their effect as presented within the film (meaning this list has 30, not 33, entries).
With that in mind, enjoy every single goshdarn Cruella needle drop ranked. And if you disagree with any of it, please don't train dogs to push any member of my family off a cliff.
30. Nina Simone - Feeling Good
Nina Simone's rendition of "Feeling Good" is, obviously, a masterpiece. But its status as such, and its cultural ubiquity and immediately understandable shorthand, all work against it here. Used to underscore Estella's (Emma Stone) first glimpse at the Baroness' (Emma Thompson) workshop, the dramatically sweeping emotion of the tune cannot accurately convey the complicated feelings of fear and apprehension undercutting all of Estella's awe. The beauty of the tune's structure — it starts with a heart-grabbing a capella section from Simone before the orchestra kicks in — is also muted by Cruella's voiceover prattling over it. Plus, it's just a song we've all heard so many times before! For a moment that's supposed to represent reinvention and newness (concepts that are explored in the lyrics, to be fair), I wish the needle drop chosen could've followed suit.
29. Joe Dolan - You're Such a Good Looking Woman
Used briefly to underscore a preview fashion show at the Baroness' workshop, Joe Dolan's "You're Such a Good Looking Woman" isn't given enough space to make any kind of impact. Yes, we hear it as the Baroness moves a key plot point forward, asking John (Mark Strong) to capture Estella as her primary Cruella suspect, but the moment does not engage with the song in any way, meaningful or superficial. It's a shame because the tune itself has a swingin', campy, bombastic vibe that feels perfect for Cruella's tone. Why clip its wings like this?
28. Tony Martin - I Get Ideas (When We Are Dancing)
One of Cruella's delightfully mischievous usages of kitschy, earnest, pre-60s music rears its head in Tony Martin's "I Get Ideas (When We Are Dancing)." This is a fun, charming song that begs to be used ironically and savagely. Instead, we get a snippet of it as the Baroness watches Estella eating lunch in an alley (which the Baroness owns) briefly on a security camera, before having her security guards come and snatch her up. Thompson's constant sneer tangoes with this smiley tune quite well, but for not much time or impact.
27. Bee Gees - Whisper Whisper
Kudos to the music supervision team for pegging a Bee Gees song before their shift into mainstream disco success! Before the days of "Stayin' Alive," the Bee Gees put out "hipper" tunes like "Whisper Whisper" that felt more in line with the hippy-friendly, progressive, uninterested-in-being-accessible rock made by their peers. But, it's only barely heard in Cruella, underscoring a prologue moment when Young Estella (Tipper Seifert-Cleveland) and her adoptive mother Catherine (Emily Beecham) head to the Baroness' palatial residence for some kind of, yes, whispered secret favor. I dig the links, both thematic and vibe-based, but it comes and goes like some kind of... what's the word for "something spoken very quietly"?
26. Black Sabbath - The Wizard / The Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil
The first of our "fusion needle drops," in which two tunes are seamlessly blended to create a singular musical statement. Cruella ends with two of the most well-known, influential rock and roll bands ever — Black Sabbath and The Rolling Stones — to solidify the transformation from Estella to Cruella. "The Wizard" gives our faux-funeral and mansion-makeover scenes a bit of intrigue, but the moment we flip into "Sympathy for the Devil," the title of which spells out the whole point of the movie in a head-smackingly obvious manner (not to mention its identical usage to so many other movies) is the moment this fusion needle drop loses me. There's something about a movie obsessed with becoming iconic and unabashedly unsubtle closing with the most iconic and unsubtle cue available, but the eye roll sustained when it kicked in cannot be ignored.
25. David Bowie - Boys Keep Swinging
How on earth do you use a David Bowie tune so casually? In any other film, "Boys Keep Swinging" would stay on screen as long as it needs to; here, in the playlist-skip-happy Cruella, we hear the sleazy prog-funk-rock all too briefly. As Cruella sets up her and the boys' (Joel Fry as Jasper; Paul Walter Hauser as Horace) flat as a jury-rigged fashion workshop run by Artie (Jon McCrea), this tune underscores their clothes-making efforts and the stolen dalmatians' lust for chaos. The song slams you with an impeccable vibe, giving this "hard at work" scene a jolt of energy, but then dissipates into the ether soon after. It also promises a more explicit interrogation into the queer and gender dynamics given visual service in the film (the lyrics, crooned by a preening androgynous sex superstar, are all about the things you can do "when you're a boy"), but it remains an unsatisfyingly unfulfilled promise. Still — the audaciousness of using such a banger in such a subtle way is palpable.
24. Blondie - One Way or Another
How many times has Blondie's "One Way or Another" been used in a movie? Nine bazillion? Well, here is another!
The tune remains dope as hell, obviously; a scratchy, childlike simplification of what an active crush can feel like. Here, it underscores one of Cruella's many splashy Baroness party crashes, serving up one of her finest lewks: Her face spray-painted with "The future." Visually, this scene rules and rules hard. And on a guttural level, despite its overuse in media, "One Way or Another" gives it an unignorable punch. But it feels misplaced in the film, especially when taking its lyrics into account. Cruella, whom I would argue this song is emotionally tethered to at this moment, isn't searching for the Baroness or how to get her goat — she clearly has found both! And the Baroness only later makes it a primary mission to find out who Cruella is, not just yet! So why this song here and now? Is it just to scrape at any lingering goodwill, familiarity, pop culture detritus?
23. Brigitte Fontaine - Eternelle
A slinky, slippery little tune whose chords and melody remind me of another, more well-known song on this list, "Eternelle" by Brigitte Fontaine is one cool number. Combining the aesthetics of French girl-group music with a bossa nova influence from someone like Sérgio Mendes, the tune effectively underscores Cruella's rebirth after her attempted murder by the Baroness; she has become eternelle. She meets up with Artie to explain all this in a scene that, while skillfully performed, made me wish there was a little more showing and a little less telling. "Eternelle" lurks at the margins of their conversation, hinting at the mischief the two have in store quite well, putting in a much-needed sense of kineticism.
22. Judy Garland - Smile
Look. Obviously, putting Judy Garland's rendition of "Smile" in this film is going to provoke emotion, especially when used at the end of an act two scene of the Baroness setting Cruella's flat ablaze in an attempted murder. The lyrics ("smile though your heart is breaking") are too cleanly tracked to what Estella is trying to do as Cruella, and the aching melody is too melancholy not to make even the most stone-faced viewer feel something — not to mention the extratextual bit of complexity for those who know the tragic story of Garland.
My biggest problem with this cue comes, like many of the other cues here, from its ubiquity, easiness, and obviousness, especially as it relates to one other, giant, "alternate history origin story of a famous villain" film released in recent years. Joker was the snarky comparison point for Cruella since its beginning glimpses. I, for one, think the films are quite different (and think Cruella is qualitatively light years ahead of Joker). But it's really not doing itself any favors by using the same song for a similarly ironic emotional effect! With Cruella, it at least is used for a more earnest, understandable, intentional moment of despair and, yes, twistedness. But my criticism remains that it's an easy choice, and a choice the music supervisors should have known better given the clown-shaped shadow they were putting themselves under.
21. Nancy Sinatra - These Boots Are Made for Walkin’
Another painfully obvious song choice, but a fun one with a sneaky kicker (and the track that "Eternelle" reminds me of). Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" is an immediate signifier of newly found independence and butt-kicking, used in films as wide-varying as Full Metal Jacket and The Dukes of Hazzard. Here, beyond the clear tracking of "boots" used to symbolize Estella's love of designing fashion, the song accurately underscores her drunken attempts at making a better department store display window (she even goes as far as singing it within the text herself). But cannily, the film is smarter than just "using the song we all know to deliver the emotion we all know" (at least in this needle drop). By showing just how inebriated Estella is, it almost satirizes the use of this tune; she is aspiring to the level of confidence crooned by Sinatra without quite getting there. Case in point: The tune screeches to an abrupt halt as we hard cut to Estella passed out drunkenly in the display window itself, refusing any sense of a traditional catharsis or even "completion in the montage." Expectations are met and then bucked. I like it!