ABSTRACT
In Twin Peaks: The Return, David Lynch, in true auteur fashion, curated an eclectic soundtrack of pre-existing music to complement the newly composed orchestral cues by his long-time collaborator Angelo Badalamenti. The soundtrack evokes nostalgia in different ways that resonate with the original seasons’ retro style and the recent one’s emphasis on the jarring contrast between the secluded town of times past and the contemporary world. Lynch’s compilation included multiple genres and styles that can be divided into three basic categories: pre-existing music from the show’s preceding seasons and movie (i.e., Main Theme, Laura Palmer’s Theme, Audrey’s Dance); pre-existing music both classical and popular (ranging from Penderecki’s Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima to Otis Redding classics); and diegetic music performed at the Roadhouse (also known as the Bang Bang Bar). These performative moments garnered the greatest attention, as almost every episode concluded with a song performed in its entirety. In this way, the performances provided both aural commentary and structural sinew to the 18-hour saga. With these diegetic performances, Lynch adroitly navigated a fine line between the new and the nostalgic. The live context of the songs belies an idealized, pre-earbud era of communal listening. Moreover, a compilation soundtrack of the Roadhouse performances was released on vinyl in addition to digital formats, participating in the antiquated cool of Lynch’s world on an eerie, meta-narrative level. Additionally, many of the performers were of the young indie ilk while a few were established alternative stars, such as Eddie Vedder and Trent Reznor. But two of the featured performances stand out because they originally appeared as diegetic numbers in the 1990s run: “Just You” and “The World Spins.” In this chapter, I concentrate on the latter number. Co-composed by Lynch and Badalamenti, chanteuse Julee Cruise originally performed “The World Spins” in the revelatory episode 14 of season 2; she returned to the Roadhouse stage in the penultimate episode of season 3. A comparison of the two performances of “The World Spins” reveals that the song acts as a musico-narrative climactic hinge bridging the seemingly impossible gap of 25 years between seasons. By recruiting Cruise for the season’s final diegetic performance at the Roadhouse, Lynch gave his devoted followers a gift of musical nostalgia, that is, a longing for a past and a place that never was.
