Back in 2022, Joker manager Todd Phillips announced plans for a sequel with an
that revealed the title — Joker: Folie à Deux — but small else. erstwhile woman Gaga joined the cast as Harleen Quinzel, better known as Harley Quinn, the image became clearer. It clarified again with the rumors that it would be a musical, though Phillips and others active with the movie played coy about this up to the premiere. Where the first Joker looked to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy for inspiration, the sequel takes the form of a jukebox musical drawing on a variety of 20th-century songs, including pop hits, old standards, and tunes from Broadway shows and movie musicals.
As might be expected, given Joker’s grim, grimy version of realism, the musical numbers in Folie à Deux are frequently ironic, a way to soundtrack the delusions of protagonist Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix). Sometimes, they underline the action, as characters belt out boisterous songs while chaos erupts around them. Occasionally, though, Phillips plays it straight, letting a sad song service a sad scene and a happy 1 express joy, nevertheless short-lived it might be.
Neither approach works consistently, to the point where it’s frequently unclear what the filmmakers want to accomplish via their musical homages. There isn’t a bad song in the movie, however, and the eclectic choices aid keep it unpredictable. And part of that unpredictability is the wide scope of sources Phillips draws from, no of which are apparent directions for a dark drama. Here’s where Joker: Folie à Deux’s most notable tunes came from and pointers to any of the renditions that inspired the sequel.
‘We 3 (My Echo, My Shadow and Me)’
Joker: Folie à Deux opens with a series animated by Sylvain Chomet, the French author and artist behind The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist. This spin on a classical Warner Bros. cartoon finds the Joker doing conflict with his own shadow. Jackie (Brendan Gleeson), a defender at Arkham State Hospital, takes an intense interest in Arthur, the would-be clown doing time for multiple murders. But Jackie besides likes to sing, and at 1 point, Joker’s identity crisis gets a callback erstwhile Jackie reprises this song. It’s a lonely lament in which the vocalist is left with only another aspects of himself for company, and it doubles as commentary on Arthur’s deflated state as the movie begins.
This often-covered song became 1 of the biggest hits of 1940 twice: The influential vocal harmony group The Ink Spots took it all the way to No. 3 on the pop charts, as did Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, besides hitting the No. 3 place that same year with any aid from a scrappy young vocalist named Frank Sinatra.
‘When the Saints Go Marching In’
No another song in Joker: Folie à Deux appears as frequently as this uptempo spiritual number, which becomes a kind of subject song and rallying cry for Arkham’s residents. Though inextricably tied to fresh Orleans, the song has no credited composer, and its repetitive lyric has many iterations and can be stretched to whatever dimension performers want. (Sometimes in a performance of this song, you’ll hear about the moon turning red with blood. Sometimes it’s the horsemen of the apocalypse. Sometimes both.) It’s 1 of those songs that belongs to no 1 and everyone.
But Louis Armstrong’s 1938 version did more to popularize it than any another recording. Like most renditions, Armstrong’s “When the Saints Go Marching In” sounds so joyous, it’s easy to overlook that he’s singing about the end of the world, though those apocalyptic undertones most likely aid explain how it’s utilized in Phillips’ film.
‘Will the ellipse Be Unbroken?’
Arthur first meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), shortly to be the object of his amour fou, erstwhile he passes a music therapy session as Lee and another inmates are singing “Will the ellipse Be Unbroken?”, a hymn that emerged from the same era as “When the Saints Go Marching In.” While it’s an inspirational song, just like “Saints,” “Will the ellipse Be Unbroken?” is focused on how lasting happiness can’t be found in this life, only in the life beyond.
Composed in 1907 by Charles H. Gabriel and Ada R. Habershon, it’s been covered countless times, though the most celebrated version, recorded by the Carter household in 1935, keeps the tune but changes the words and alters the title to “Can the ellipse Be Unbroken (By and By).”
A holdover from Joker’s final scene, this song of sanguine defiance makes a couple of appearances in the sequel. First recorded by Marion Montgomery in 1963, it became a hit after Frank Sinatra included it in a 1966 tv special, A Man and His Music — Part II. Folie à Deux features respective songs associated with Sinatra, but even without them, the movie would bear the president of the Board’s influence. erstwhile singing, Phoenix’s body language frequently recalls Sinatra’s, and Phillips draws inspiration from images of Sinatra in concert, never more straight than erstwhile framing Joker alone on a stage, illuminated by a single spotlight. It’s an instance of 1 entertainer with a dark side paying homage to another.
“When the Saints Go Marching In” and “Will the ellipse Be Unbroken?” both emerged straight from different strands of spiritual music. Composed in 1930 by Harold Arlen, with lyrics by Ted Koehler, this number has roots in the secular world, but looks to church for inspiration.
The song took on a fresh life erstwhile Judy Garland sang it in the 1950 musical Summer Stock, in which she plays a farmer bitten by the desire to execute erstwhile a troupe of actors takes up residence on her property. Garland later made it a cornerstone of her concerts, and it became nearly as closely associated with the vocalist as “Over the Rainbow.” Continuing a Folie à Deux theme, it’s a plucky, upbeat song about death and all the ways the planet in which we live can’t compare to the afterlife.
‘I’ve Got the planet on a String’
Speaking of Arlen and Koehler, they’re besides liable for this number, sung by both Gleeson and woman Gaga at different points in the film. It’s another song profoundly associated with Sinatra, who had a hit with it in his comeback year of 1953. But others sang it before him, including Cab Calloway and Sinatra idol Bing Crosby.
‘For erstwhile in My Life’
Sometimes, a song just needs the right artist to make it immortal. Ron Miller and Orlando Murden wrote “For erstwhile in My Life” for Motown in 1965, and respective of the label’s another artists took a crack at it with limited success. So did Nancy Wilson and Tony Bennett, the second making the charts by giving the song a tender ballad treatment in 1967.
Musically, Bennett’s rendition doesn’t have much in common with Stevie Wonder’s better-known 1968 smash, but both singers invest the song with openness and vulnerability to match a lyric that captures the feeling of individual amazed that they aren’t alone anymore. In 1 of Folie à Deux’s rawest moments, Arthur uses it to express the same sentiment.
‘That’s Entertainment’
Folie à Deux makes many visual references to classical musicals — in 1 early moment, a group of Arkham guards hold up dark umbrellas, which abruptly athletics colors consecutive out of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg — but only 1 musical makes a direct cameo. Arthur and Lee sit together at an Arkham movie night where they watch the classical 1953 Vincente Minnelli musical The Band Wagon. Its celebrated numbers include this paean to show business, which includes a couple of details that could have been written specifically for Arthur, including the beginning 1 about a “clown with his pants falling down.” (The film’s run-up to the song even includes a mention to Bill Robinson dancing on stairs, which surely strikes a chord with Arthur, no alien to stair-dancing.)
‘If My Friends Could See Me Now’
“That’s Entertainment” besides includes the line “The planet is simply a phase / the phase is simply a planet of entertainment,” which brings to head the yearning for fame that drove Arthur in Joker. In the sequel, Lee joins him for a song about wanting to be seen and appreciated by the people they utilized to know — and, it’s implied, the people who utilized to look down on them. It’s sung by Shirley MacLaine in the 1969 movie Sweet Charity, Bob Fosse’s directorial debut. But Fosse’s wife, creative partner, and muse Gwen Verdon originated it on stage, in a musical inspired by Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria.
The Bee Gees were just starting out erstwhile they recorded this song, a item of the group’s 1967 album Bee Gees 1st. Doing their best imitation of American soul music, the Gibb brothers scored a hit with a lament sung from the position of individual who feels like they’ll never be on the receiving end of love.
An expression of abject loneliness, it doesn’t seem like a song that would easy lend itself to a duet. But Lee and Arthur’s rendition isn’t precisely traditional, either. Joker and Harley are far from the only artists to effort the song. any performers have taken it on rather successfully, like Nina Simone and the Flying Burrito Brothers. The Bee Gees’ version remains the best known, though Simone’s tops it for drama and intensity.
‘(They Long to Be) Close to You’
After Burt Bacharach and Hal David penned this song in 1963, it made the rounds of recording artists in search of their next hit. Richard Chamberlain, Dionne Warwick, and Dusty Springfield all recorded it, but it never caught on like many of Bacharach and David’s another ’60s hits. That changed in 1970 erstwhile the Carpenters scored a hit built around Karen Carpenter’s plaintive vocals, which gave the love song an undercurrent of melancholy without changing a word.
Some of Folie à Deux’s song selections seem little than apparent — but not this one. “The Joker” originated in Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s allegorical 1964 musical The Roar of the Greasepaint — The odor of the Crowd, and it opens with the line “The Joker is me.” A small on the nose? Sure. But if you’re making a Joker jukebox musical it would be hard to pass this 1 up. And it’s sung by a crying-on-the-inside clown not unlike Arthur Fleck, which must have made it impossible to ignore.
The Roar of the Greasepaint — The odor of the Crowd is now better known as the origin for any well-liked songs than as a play, spawning “Feeling Good” and “Who Can I Turn To?” in addition to “The Joker,” which attracted covers by Sammy Davis Jr. and Shirley Bassey, among others. Newley originated the function himself, and performs the song on the cast album.
‘Gonna Build a Mountain’
Another selection from a Bricusse/Newley musical, “Gonna Build a Mountain” plays an even more prominent function in the film. A item from halt the planet — I Want to Get Off, first staged in 1961, the song besides seems like an apparent choice for the movie to draw from, thanks to a protagonist who plays the lead role, Littlechap, in clown makeup.
That item isn’t evident in the song, but it’s of a part with Folie à Deux’s soundtrack in another ways: It’s another gospel-inspired number, this 1 built around the dream of building “a heaven from a small hell.” Newley originated this function as well, though Tony Tanner assumed it in the 1966 movie adaptation. But the highest-profile version of the song belongs to Sammy Davis Jr., who played Littlechap in a ’70s phase revival, and in a tv movie version retitled Sammy Stops the World.
‘If You Go distant (Ne Me Quitte Pas)’
Belgian-born singer-songwriter Jacques Brel enjoyed large success in the Francophone world, then picked up an even wider audience erstwhile poet/singer/songwriter Rod McKuen began translating his lyrics into English, sometimes loosely. “If You Go distant (Ne Me Quitte Pas)” reached the English-language planet first, and it remains 1 of Brel’s most-covered songs. It’s besides 1 of his saddest, even with McKuen’s somewhat more hopeful lyric.
American singer/comedian Damita Jo recorded the earliest English version, followed by, among others, Glen Campbell, Marc Almond, Ray Charles, Neil Diamond, Cyndi Lauper, Brenda Lee, Frank Sinatra, Dusty Springfield, Scott Walker, and McKuen himself. It besides became a favourite of Shirley Bassey, whose slow, smoky version sounds like individual having their heart destroyed part by piece.
‘True Love Will Find You in the End’
Stay through the credits of Joker: Folie à Deux, and you’ll hear Phoenix singing the film’s most obscure track, albeit 1 beloved by its creator’s passionate cult following. A fixture of Austin, Texas, for most of his adult life, artist and musician Daniel Johnston began his recording career via homemade, self-distributed cassettes filled with his eccentric, inimitable lo-fi music, and he became a favourite of the indie stone world. Kurt Cobain could be frequently seen wearing a Johnston T-shirt.
Though Johnston struggled with intellectual wellness issues throughout his life, he remained a prolific recording artist until his death at age 58 in 2019. The sweet, wistful “True Love Will Find You in the End” became 1 of his best-known songs, thanks in part to Beck’s cover version, but Johnston’s own performance captures the aching sincerity evident throughout his work.
