DO: Use well-known songs in unexpected ways that still resonate with the original intent.

Recorded pseudonymously under the Derek & the Dominos moniker, “Layla” is Eric Clapton’s finest moment as a songwriter — an admittedly low bar to clear, since nearly all his best stuff was written by Jack Bruce, George Harrison, or JJ Cale, and also Duane Allman’s contribution to the song should not be underestimated. But still! It’s an outpouring of unrequited love for Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend and frequent collaborator Harrison, a way for this guy to reforge his broken heart into a merciless series of interlocking riffs and shout-sung choruses. It concludes with a movement that’s as gentle as the body of the song is frenzied, though it’s no less desperate-sounding for that.

Naturally, Martin Scorsese used it to soundtrack the discovery of half a dozen dead bodies.

Why does it work in GoodFellas? Because it gets right at the heart of the mournful, elegiac feel of the original without simply rehashing its overt emotional content. No one is heartbroken over finding poor Frankie Carbone frozen solid inside a meat truck, except perhaps Mrs. Carbone. But there’s still a sense that something has been lost, that the promised happy ending will never arrive.

More than that, “Layla” plays the same role in Clapton’s career that the murders that result in this sequence play in the career of Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Conway. The song is Slowhand’s masterpiece, and the Lufthansa heist, literally the biggest robbery in American history at the time, was Jimmy the Gent’s. Both Jimmy and Eric were at the top of their very different games here.

Put it all together and it’s a complex, captivating song choice that elevates both the scene it accompanies and the song itself, without the former relying on the latter to do all the dirty work. Scorsese’s library is full of this kind of music cue —as is GoodFellas itself.

SEE ALSO:
• Fargo, “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath
• American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, “Easy Lover” by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins

This one was months in the making: I wrote about how and how not to use music cues in TV and movies for Vulture.