Songs in the Key of Nudity: Life is a Lost Highway

Every so often a nude scene gets paired with a song that, for better or worse, ends up making it that much more memorable, and Songs in the Key of Nudity is starting off 2025 with a soundtrack that’s considered one of - if not the best soundtrack - ever assembled for a film by surrealist director David Lynch. And it just so happened that it was produced by an Oscar-winning musician who’s no doubt about to score even more noms this awards season.

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Lynch’s Lost Highway, which was first released in France twenty-eight years ago this week, is a treasure trove for 90s music lovers while also containing the typical spooky sounds of Angelo Badalamenti that David Lynch projects are known for, plus some bangers from glam icons David Bowie and Lou Reed thrown in for good measure. It’s the perfect pick for this week because it’s one of the early film soundtracks produced by Trent Reznor, the Nine Inch Nails frontman who would go on to win Academy Awards for his work on The Social Network and Soul, and who recently won a Golden Globe for last year’s Challengers.

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It should be no surprise to fans of the film, its soundtrack, and its seven skin-sational nude scenes (most featuring the phenomenal funbags of another future Oscar winner, Patricia Arquette) that choosing just one to concentrate on is no easy task. The one Badalamenti-backed nude scene is actually the topless make-out sesh featuring Natasha Gregson Wagner. The song, called “Dub Driving,” is in the background as she reveals her rack to Balthazar Getty, but despite them being in a car, there’s no driving happening - the only engine being revved is our own!

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Patricia Arquette Nude in Lost Highway

Twice in the film, Patricia’s bare pair is showcased with a song that actually wasn’t on the soundtrack due to a licensing issue - The Mortal Coil’s “Song to the Siren.” She’s technically playing two different characters in these scenes: Fred Madison (Bill Pullman)’s wife Renee in their sex scene and Balthazar’s blonde affair partner Alice Wakefield as they do it in the dirt later. But with Bill and Balthazar playing essentially two sides of the same person, the repeated music is just another way to show how they are inexplicably linked.

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But the top music and nudity team-up has to be Patricia’s at-gunpoint striptease to Marilyn Manson’s cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You.” Gangster and porn producer Mr. Eddy/Dick Laurent (Robert Loggia) has a staring contest with Patricia as she dresses down to her undies and then slinks towards him, putting a spell on all of us with her naked knockers. While the action on screen is scant, the intense music echoes what everyone’s feeling the moment we see Patricia pop out of that bra - this is one highway we want to ride all night long!

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Catch Up With Previous Editions of Songs in the Key of Nudity

—Death is Tragic, but Boobs are Magic

—Take It Off

—Unfinished Skin-Pathy

—No Pants Party

—Oh Sheena

—Risqué Business