FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Mapping the Music and Style of "Dazed and Confused"

So many floral prints, so little time.

I watch Dazed and Confused anytime I need a pick-me-up, which is pretty often. The film has everything I love: effortless 70s style with floral patterns on both gals and dudes, and the soundtrack consists of all my favorite classic rock tunes. The film, following rising seniors and freshman on their last day of school in May of 1976, makes me thankful that I wasn't a freshman at a high school in Texas (I thought hazing was limited to Greek life at college?). Spanning over hardly 24 hours, it gives us a glimpse into the lives of these high school students, as well as the music and fashion that defined their personalities and lives.

Advertisement

Below is the whole D&C soundtrack which you should listen to it while reading this piece

Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" plays in the background as we meet nearly all the characters we will learn to love or hate with fierce emotion in the next hour and 42 minutes. You’ve got your jocks:

Your nerds:

Your stoners:

Your popular girls:

And your freshmen:

"School's Out" by Alice Cooper sets the stage in the beginning. The song blasts as students run through the hallways, throwing their books and papers into the air, leaving a mess for the janitors to clean up.

Though the high school students are excited for summer to be starting, the junior high students couldn’t be more terrified. “School’s Out” is an ominous track for them—one that reminds them that if they don’t run fast this summer, they’ll have their asses beat with wooden paddles that the senior jocks have made.

Though the film only follows each character for less than a day, we get a pretty nice peek into their wardrobes, and dare I say I’m rather impressed with them all. Let’s start with the jocks.

RANDALL “PINK” FLOYD
Though there isn't really just one main protagonist or antagonist in this film, Pink, played by Jason London, comes closest to being the main character. Pink is a star football player and he is friends with everyone—the stoners, the poker-playing nerds, the ladies—and he even cuts the freshmen a break. Pink’s major issue is that he doesn’t want to sign the pledge to not participate in recreational drug use while he is on the football team: “I think they’re afraid that some of us might be having too good a time,” he says.

Advertisement

During the day, Pink might be wearing a boring grey pocket tee and a pair of jeans, but at night he busts out a patterned purple button down (don’t forget the puka shell necklace). Why don’t dudes wear psychedelic tops like that anymore?

DON DAWSON
Don is gross and I hate him. He is the worst of the jocks, just a really crude and awful fellow. HOWEVER he wears a pretty solid pair of overalls, so I gotta give him props for those. For the party later that night he changes into a green buttondown. But other than that he has zero redeeming qualities.

Moving on to the stoners, I think the crowd favorite is:

RON SLATER

Slater is the token stoner. This kid is never not high, and honestly I don't know how people like him are even alive. I'm assuming his brain has almost melted entirely. Slater just wears one outfit for the whole movie, but it’s totally excusable because it is so definitive of his personality. With his backwards newsboy cap atop his unkempt, waist-length brown hair and his brown t-shirt starkly featuring a marijuana leaf, Slater’s outfit is an unforgettable one.

KEVIN PICKFORD AND MICHELLE BURROUGHS
Pickford, played by Shawn Anderson, is the slightly more together stoner, but he’s still beyond fade. Though he doesn’t have a lot of pivotal lines, he does get a lot of screen-time, and you see him walking around with a floral shirt unbuttoned and his shaggy hair framing his face perfectly.

Advertisement

He is your older brother's mysteriously hot friend who you’ve always had a crush on, but he’s unfortunately taken by the equally hot Michelle Burroughs, played by Milla Jovovich.

The song that Michelle plays at the party while gazing at the sky is actually a tune from Jovovich’s 1994 album The Divine Comedy. Though this detail is anachronistic, as the song was written two decades after the era of the film, I feel like it lends more personality to Michelle’s otherwise extremely quiet character.

So now we have our nerds:

TONY OLSON AND MIKE NEWHOUSE
I find Tony weirdly dreamy. I think it's because of his quiet nature, pretty chin-length blonde hair and wire frames. He’s not the type to go to parties, but Mike forces him into going to the kegger that night, saying "You need to stop playing so much poker, man."

Tony ends up hitting it off with a freshman, Sabrina, at the kegger. I kind of wanted them to bone, but he just ends up kissing her goodnight, staying true to his soft-spoken character I suppose.

Mike is a rather complex character. He’s a football player, so you want to call him a jock, but he’s intelligent and hangs out with Tony, so you want to call him a nerd. On top of that, he’s very insecure about himself and his future and is having a hard time coming to terms with his misanthropic ways. The poor kid, filled with teen angst and fear of the unknown. His outfits are a little weak, but he’s got a long mane of hair that makes up for his lack of style.

Advertisement

Moving on to the popular girls:

DARLA MARKS
Darla Marks, played by Parker Posey, is the girl I would've absolutely feared in high school. I would've broke down into tears if she even looked at me, and I probably would've asked my mom if I could transfer schools.

Darla is the queen of the seniors. In the infamous freshmen initiation scene, Darla and all the other senior girls haze the incoming freshmen in the parking lot. Clad in matching shirts that say "SENIORS" on one side and they're graduating year of 1977 on the other, they pour ketchup and mustard on the freshmen, dump flour on them, and crack raw eggs over their bodies.

All the other girls are wearing denim cut offs, but Daria has a pair of multi-colored, striped hot pants on signifying her H.B.I.C. status. Ironically, "Why Can't We Be Friends" plays during this scene, highlighting the idiocy of the initiation, but the necessity the girls see in the tradition.

JODI KRAMER
Jodi Kramer is the sweetest of the seniors and a total babe. In her high-waisted jeans and collared tie-top, she epitomizes our modern-day understanding of 70s style. Jodi asks the senior boys to “take it easy” on her brother Mitch, an incoming freshman, but her plea backfires entirely as the jocks make sure to torture him extra.

MITCH KRAMER
How could you not have a crush on Mitch? He's the cutest of his pack of friends, and his style is truly what I try to emulate. First we see him in an old school Adidas Trefoil t-shirt with a pair of denim straightlegs:

Advertisement

(Shout out to his friend Carl with the striped bellbottoms. Bold move, Carl).

Next we see Mitch looking cute as a button in his baseball uniform:

And finally, my favorite outfit of them all, his floral button down trumps all else:

Mitch changes into the flowery ensemble for his night out with the seniors, and he’s picked up by Pink in Wooderson’s car. Though he doesn’t belong to a specific clique, Wooderson is a character we absolutely cannot forget about.

DAVID WOODERSON
Wooderson, played by Matthew McConaughey, is a creepy older dude who graduated years ago and now “works for the city”. He prowls around the Emporium, looking for high school chicks to pick up: “I get older, but they stay the same age”, he says. The first time we meet Wooderson, another War tune, "Low Rider", is playing in the background. The perfect 70s pregame song, “Low Rider” has that catchy riff and is certainly appropriate given Wooderson’s sweet ride, which he later discusses in depth with another dude at the pool hall.

After hanging at the Emporium, they all roll out to the Moontower for a kegger, and the film features plenty of top 70s rock and pop hits to soundtrack the various montages of party scenes, including my favorite by Joan Jett, “Cherry Bomb.”

And of course as the party wraps up, “Tuesday’s Gone With the Wind” begins to play, the keg running dry:

But the party isn’t over for everyone—we catch Mitch getting some action with the sophomore girl he’d been eyeing all night to my dream make out song: “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Croft. SO ROMANTIC AND GROOVY.

Advertisement

However, it’s the penultimate scene of Dazed and Confused that is easily my favorite of the film. Mitch comes back home after his long night out, brushes off getting caught by his mom, drunkenly stumbles into bed, gets his headphones on and drifts off, likely dreaming about his escapades, as "Slow Ride" crescendos in the background. Nothing like climbing into bed with good tunes, your body sore from the night before, with zero obligations on the horizon.

Related:

My Favorite Soundtrack: Romeo + Juliet

My Favorite Soundtrack: Dumb and Dumber
What? You want more Dumb and Dumber? Here's a track-by-track breakdown of the soundtrack, you nerd.

The Score: Mapping the Music and Style of Clueless

The Score: Mapping the Music and Style of Empire Records

The Score: Mapping the Music and Style of That Thing You Do

The Score: Mapping the Music and Style of 200 Cigarettes

Shriya Samavai is looking for her Mitch-Kramer-Kevin-Pickford-hybrid-dream-dude. She's on Twitter - @shriekeliene