Anachronistic Soundtrack

Sometimes a work's soundtrack is composed of popular songs chosen from a different era than the film's setting. This can apply to either diegetic music (the characters in the work can hear the music) or non-diegetic music (they're part of the soundtrack, but the characters can't hear them).

There are two basic variations:

1. Music older than the setting. This may be used to illustrate that the main character is old, or out of touch with pop culture, or for nostalgia values.
2. Music more modern than its setting. This is an impossible, paradox situation, a deliberate Anachronism Stew, as the music did not exist yet when the work is set. Can be explained by Time Travel or by pure Artistic License, and might double up with Period Piece, Modern Language. Some creators deliberately use music familiar to their modern audience rather than period-accurate pieces to make the emotions underscored by said music more immediately understandable or relatable.

In Postmodernism, this is known as pastiche. Can also be done for Rule of Cool. Note that this specifically references when the film's soundtrack is from a different time than when the film is set not from when the film is made. A Period Piece does not count if it uses period-accurate music, like Rock of Ages. Sometimes the movie doesn't even attempt to justify why they're doing this. Typically this does not apply to classical music, which is usually going to be older than the time in which a work is set. A staple of Class Reunion movies, with the soundtrack being selected from the era in which the protagonists went to high school, not the time they're living in 10+ years later.

Compare Soundtrack Dissonance. Can overlap with Nothing but Hits.

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Examples:

New Setting, Old Music

Anime and Manga

• Cowboy Bebop is set far enough in the future that humanity has colonized the Solar System at least as far as Saturn's moons, but the music heard in it is mostly those popular in the earlier half of the 20th century, such as jazz, blues, ragtime, and swing. The use of genres not normally associated with space-traveling science fiction is part of its portrayal of the return of the adventurous spirit of that time period once humanity can start exploring other worlds in earnest, as well as futuristic counterparts to The Roaring '20s in some places and The Great Depression in some others.

Films — Animation

• Lilo & Stitch uses mostly old Elvis Presley songs in its soundtrack, despite taking place in the present day. This was done to highlight Lilo's eccentricities; a girl her age would be listening to contemporary pop, instead of songs from almost fifty years earlier. It's also implied to be a connection to her late parents.
• NIMONA (2023): Despite the film’s setting being a medieval / sci-fi universe, real life contemporary songs such as Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law” can occasionally be heard playing over the radio.

Films — Live-Action

• Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel are both set in 2014, but all of the songs therein are from the '60s and '70s. Peter Quill was raised on these songs by his late mother, and when he was the subject of an Alien Abduction all he had with him was one cassette she had made for him with those songs on it. He later acquires a second cassette and eventually an MP3 player, but the songs are still from the same era.
  • The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022) includes Christmas-themed songs from the 80's, 90's, and even as late as 2010 (Miss Jackie's "Mrs. Claus") - Quill does seem to be using the mp3 player to listen to newer songs now, plus unlike previous Guardians movies, some scenes take place on present day earth.
• Central Intelligence is about two guys who went to high school in the '90s reconnecting over a CIA mission just before their Class Reunion, and the songs are all pulled from the 1990s.
• Grosse Pointe Blank has an all-'80s soundtrack as one of its leads, a DJ, declares that the town's station will be adhering to an "All '80s, all vinyl" format in honor of the upcoming reunion.
• American Reunion is littered heavily with songs from the late '90s, many of them were on the original movie's soundtrack.
• The Big Chill is about a group of friends reuniting after one of their high school friends killed himself. They gather and stay at one of the friends' old house and reflect over their lives and that of their late friend set to the sounds of the 1960s songs they all grew up enjoying.
• The Great Gatsby (2013) made headlines when Jay-Z was hired as a musical advisor. Many thought the film would consist of a lot of anachronistic material. While there was some hip-hop in the score, it was much less than expectations.
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller boasts a soundtrack by Leonard Cohen in the Old West. It pulls the viewer out of the notion of a traditional Western pretty immediately.
• The Sting featured the ragtime standard "The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin in its credits sequence. Many viewers were under the impression that this was a period-appropriate piece of music for the film's 1936 setting, but the piece was actually composed in 1902.
• Spider-Man: Homecoming has an '80s theme for the Homecoming dance so many of the songs in the soundtrack, including a web-swinging montage having nothing to do with the dance, are '80s tunes.

Web Animation

• Alastor of Hazbin Hotel is accompanied by old timey music and sound effects, as befits his nature as the stylish Radio Demon.

Video Games

• Fallout 3 features songs from the 1930s to the 1950s on its in-game radio in order to fit its 1950s-inspired atmosphere. Lampshaded and Hand Waved by the radio's DJ, Three Dog, that such vinyls were all that managed to survive the apocalypse.

Old Setting, New Music

Anime and Manga

• Chainsaw Man: In Part 2, which takes place in 1998/1999, Fumiko takes Denji to karaoke where she sings "ChuChu Lovely MuniMuni MuraMura PrinPrin Boron Nururu ReroRero" by Maximum the Hormone, who was founded around the same time, but would only release that song in 2007. Though considering Part 1 establishes that the Chainsaw Devil altered the course of history, the anachronism could be intentional.
• Samurai Champloo is set in Japan roughly around the tail end of the Meiji Restoration, which would put it in the 19th century, but its entire soundtrack is made out of hip-hop and R&B. Though part of it is to contrast the above-mentioned Cowboy Bebop, the series parallels many elements of traditional Japanese culture with modern-day gangster culture to show how they're not that different.

Films — Animation

• Inu-Oh is set in Muromachi era Japan and focuses on a Noh dancing troupe that stands out from others of its kind by having their performances be closer to modern rock concerts instead of traditional dancing and playing from 14th-century Japan.
• The Shrek films are already a massive Anachronism Stew, with their combination of Medieval setting and modern pop culture references, so it's no surprise that they use mostly songs from the latter 20th Century. Donkey, in particular, sings mostly pop tunes from the '70s and '80s.
• The film Encanto uses modern-sounding music throughout it, despite it taking place in the early 20th century.

Films — Live-Action

• 8 Women: This Jukebox Musical is set in the 1950s, however the characters sing songs released in the 60s at the earliest. The only exception is "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux", which started out as a poem published in 1944 and was set to music by George Brassens in 1953.
• The Bridges of Madison County, set in the mid-Sixties, features music by Johnny Hartman, who was in his prime at the time. But the songs used in the movie are from his album Once in Every Life, released in 1980.
• Catherine Called Birdy (2022): Some scenes in the film utilize 20th and 21st century pop as background music, contrasting the medieval setting. For example, the 1960s song "My Boyfriend's Back" plays as she spends time with George.
• Corsage is set in the 1870s, and its exploration of female ennui through a modern lens is helped by 20th and 21st century songs. Some are even rendered diegetically in period-typical styles, such as the 1960s number "As Tears Go By" sung by a harpist.
• Das Boot has a downplayed example: The film takes place in 1941, and features a recording of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" by the Red Army Choir. The song is from 1912, but the Red Army Choir recording is from 1956.
• Demon of the Lute has an intentional example. The film is set in ancient China, and has an anachronistic rock soundtrack straight from the '80s, which plays throughout the film, including the opening titles. However, since it's a parody that's intentionally ridiculous.
• Dirty Dancing takes place in 1963, but its Signature Songs, "She's Like the Wind" and "(I've Had) the Time of My Life," are pure products of 1987, when the film was released.
• Django Unchained: The film is set in 1858 but the soundtrack includes many examples of modern music, including rap (such as "100 Black Coffins" by Rick Ross). A fair bit of the music is borrowed from other films, most made between 1966 and 1974.
• Fear Street Part One: 1994 has a soundtrack filled with Nothing but Hits from The '90s, some of which are from after the film's 1994 setting. White Zombie's "More Human Than Human" (which Josh is shown listening to) and Garbage's "Only Happy When It Rains" are from 1995, "Firestarter" by The Prodigy is from 1996, and White Town's "Your Woman" is from 1997.
• The Greatest Showman is set in the 19th century, but the songs are done with contemporary pop and hip-hop to illustrate how ahead of his time PT Barnum was.
• Zig-zagged in The Great Gatsby (2013), which is set in The Roaring '20s. While some scenes are set to modern hip-hop music, some of the songs are also sung in a style consistent with 1920s jazz.
• Inglorious Basterds set during WWII, features "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" by David Bowie from 1982.
• Jojo Rabbit takes place in 1944 & 1945, but contains German language versions of "I Want To Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles which came out in 1964 and "Heroes" by David Bowie from 1977. One of the trailers is set to The Monkees song "I'm a Believer", which was first released in 1967.
• A Knight's Tale: 14th-century knights rocking out to the music of the '70s, including Queen and David Bowie. This is a form of Translation Convention; tournaments were sporting events to people of the time, so the tournaments get sporting-event music to show the way people felt about them. As the director points out on the DVD Commentary, the usual alternative of an orchestral score would have been just as anachronistic to the 14th century.
• British Sea Power's soundtrack for the 1934 Irish "fictional documentary" Man of Aran is essentially modern in style and form, despite the low-tech nature of the community depicted.
• Marie Antoinette (2006) is set in the 1700s, but uses music by the likes of The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Aphex Twin.
• Moulin Rouge! draws its music from songs that came much later than its 1900 setting.
• The Peter Pan prequel Pan takes place sometime in the Victorian era, yet the Lost Boys are singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in one sequence.
• Rosaline is a Shakespeare adaptation set in Renaissance Italy featuring covers of 21st century pop songs (e.g. Robyn's "Dancing on my Own" and Enrique Iglesias's "Escape" feature at the Capulet ball).
• Schindler's List uses in its soundtrack the 1967 song "Jerusalem of Gold".
• Son of Rambow, set in 1983, features the song "Close to Me" by The Cure from 1985.
• Starter for 10: The movie takes place in 1985, yet we hear The Cure's "Pictures of You" and "Lovesong" (the latter is played during the end credits) which were released in 1989 on the album Disintegration.

Live-Action TV

• Westworld: In-universe, the eponymous Wild West amusement park has a piano tavern play more modern songs such as "Paint it Black".
• Agent Carter opens its first episode with "That Man" by Caro Emerald. The episode is set in 1947 but the song is from 2010.
• American Gods uses anachronistic music in some of its historical "Coming to America" segments to set the right tone. For instance, Anansi's speech to an 18th-century slave ship is set to chaotic jazz, and Essie MacGowan's tale of crime and sexual misadventure is accompanied by various 1950's doo-wop songs.
• Stranger Things:
  • The show is usually all about keeping things period-appropriate to the setting (it starts in 1983), and this is particularly accurate with the music. However, they goofed in one scene by mere weeks: the Season 1 episode "The Monster", set in November 1983, has some of the teenagers listening to Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night" in a car—released on January 21, 1984.
  • Season 2's "Madmax" uses Oingo Boingo's "Just Another Day" in a scene set on 28 October 1984, a song that wouldn't be recorded or released until, funnily enough, 28 October 1985 (although this example is used non-diagetically).
  • More deliberately, the climax of the final episode of Season 1 as Eleven performs a Heroic Sacrifice, Hopper and Joyce frantically try to revive Will and Hopper flashes back to the death of his daughter is non-diagetically set to Moby's "When It's Cold I'd Like To Die", a song that wouldn't be released until March 1995 — just over eleven years after the events of the episode. This song also appears during the season four finale.
  • The version of "Nocturnal Me" by Echo & the Bunnymen used at the end of the fifth episode wouldn't be recorded until early 1984.
  • New Order's "Elegia", used during Will's funeral, wouldn't be released until 1985.
  • The Bangles' cover of "Hazy Shade of Winter" didn't come out until 1987.
  • Cutting Crew's "(I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight" was released in the UK in 1986, and not until January of 1987 in the US.
  • "Play With Me" by Extreme, used during a Season 4 montage, wasn't released until 1989.
• Almost all of the soundtrack for Peaky Blinders is anachronistic: the series is set in the 1920s, but the soundtrack is almost all post-1980 rock. The series' theme is Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand."
• Reign, set in the 1500s, occasionally likes to use instrumental covers of popular 2010s songs, usually for dancing scenes. The ballroom music playing in the background of 2x13 is an instrumental version of "Chandelier" by Sia, Lola's Wedding Dance is to an instrumental of Lorde's "Royals", and at one point Greer and Leith dance to an instrumental of The Lumineers's "Stubborn Love".
• The Serpent Queen is set in the sixteenth century. The show's theme song contains distorted guitar riffs, while the end credits typically feature punk and alternative rock songs by female artists.
• Harlots is set in 18th century London but often has rock music in the background.
• Dickinson, set in the 1850s, but with music by Billie Eilish, Mitski, and A$AP Rocky
• Bridgerton does the "instrumental covers of modern songs" version, featuring string covers (some performed by Vitamin String Quartet) of Ariana Grande, Maroon 5 and Madonna, among others to accompany its Regency England drama.
• American Horror Story: Freak Show, set in 1952, has Jessica Lange's character Elsa Mars singing "Life on Mars?" by David Bowie, which wouldn't be released until 1971, and later Lana Del Rey's "Gods and Monsters", released in 2012. Bette and Dot perform Fiona Apple's "Criminal", from 1997, and Jimmy sings Kurt Cobain's "Come As You Are", from 1992.
• Young Sheldon: The episode "A Mother, a Child, and a Blue Man's Backside" features a 1993 song from The Ramones playing in Sheldon's comic book store in 1989. Lampshaded by Steve Molaro in the Chuck Lorre Productions Vanity Plate at the end of the episode.
• Subverted in 1899. The soundtrack prominently features classic rock hits despite the Victorian setting. This initially seems out of place, but is a hint that the setting is much more modern than it initially appears.
• Riverdale: In "Halloween II", Veronica’s show performs "Rose Tint My World" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The season takes place in 1955 and the the song is from 1975.
• The Buccaneers (2023): The 2023 pop song that scores the trailer (Olivia Rodrigo's "all-american bitch") is centuries removed from the 1870s setting of the show, but it helps add a rebellious modern sensibility to the American heroines.
• The soundtrack of Underground, which was set in the 1850s in antebellum America, focused on modern day music from various genres including rock, rap, pop, and R&B. This included artists such as Ibeyi, Beyoncé, and John Legend (one of the executive producers).
• Quantum Leap (2022) has Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" (1990) playing diagetically in 1989.
• Secrets of Sulphur Springs has a scene where Savannah asks the DJ at a camp dance to play "I Don't Know" by The Prams...in 1990, 25 years before that song was released. Given the show's Time Travel premise, it's not impossible that she could have a tape of the song, but everyone at the dance treats the song like it's completely normal and not something they've never heard before.

Music

• Fitting their steampunk motifs, The Men That Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing produced special limited releases of "Sewer" and "Free Spirit" on wax cylinders, the first audio-recording format invented.

Theater

• Jesus Christ Superstar: tells the New Testament using the music, style, and aesthetic of a 1970s musical.
• The musical Hamilton is set during the late 1700s and early 1800s, yet the soundtrack is mostly comprised of rap, hip-hop, R&B and the like.
• Westeros: An American Musical is retelling A Song of Ice and Fire, which is a pseudo-medieval fantasy story, with parodies of songs from Hamilton, resulting in music that is just as out of place at it was in its original context.
• Spring Awakening retains the 19th-century setting from the play it is based on, but all of the songs are in the style of pop-rock music circa 2006, when it was first produced off-Broadway.
• Alice by Heart, from the composers of Spring Awakening, is similar musically to the latter (i.e. contemporary pop and rock tunes), but this time is a loose retelling of Alice in Wonderland set during World War II.
• Six: The Musical is similar to Hamilton in that it retells historical events (in this case, the lives of Henry VIII's six wives) through pop and R&B from the 2000s and 2010s.
• Lizzie is another musical along the lines of Six, though this one retells the Lizzie Borden case through songs clearly informed by riot grrrl music.

Video Games

• Bioshock Infinite features covers of several songs written long after the game takes place (1912). It later turns out that they were plagiarized from alternate timelines.
• Koei's Musou (Warriors) franchise is very fond of this: Dynasty Warriors, which is set in the Three Kingdoms era (188-280 AD), has rock music with a mix of traditional Chinese music. Samurai Warriors, which is set in the Sengoku Period, has techno music with a combination of traditional Japanese music.
• 1944: The Loop Master features suspiciously similar versions of rock songs that wouldn't be written for another 20-30 years.
• The Legend Of Tian Ding is set in 1909 Taiwan, and for the most part features period-accurate soundtrack as background music, right until the Final Boss battle against Shimada with an (awesome) out-of-place rock score. The end credits song after beating the game, "Love in the Deep Pits" also features rap lyrics too advanced for the game's period, though it could be surmised as a song performed by future generations commemorating the titular hero.
• The Thief series has a roughly late-medieval setting, but features mostly atmospheric ambient music and sounds throughout most gameplay. Religious buildings tend to have ambients that are variations on choir-like vocals, depending on the faction. The main intro and outro themes are an outright blend of drum and bass and rock music. The credits song for Thief II: The Metal Age, by German band Subway to Sally, mixes modern metal with some medieval period instruments, and the results are oddly awesome. All the music in the Thief games is in line with their overall anachronistic nature, featuring an archaic setting with the beginnings of an industrial revolution, and a focus on the criminal underworld (including the master thief protagonist, who often has to evade both the law and his own fellow criminals).
• Mafia II is mostly set in 1951 while featuring songs from across the entire decade, and some even from the '60s. The 1940s segments fare a little better.
• Same goes for Mafia III, which takes place in 1968, but it fares much better than the previous game, since there's only a handful of songs that came out in 1969 or the early '70s, not counting the more modern covers of '60s songs that play towards the end of the game.
• Knights of the Holy Grail (Arthurian Legend-themed mod for Neverwinter Nights) uses an instrumental cover of Rule, Britannia! (1740) as the ambient theme for King Arthur's castle.
• Onmyōji (2016), set in the Heian period, has traditional Japanese-themed BGM tracks and sound effects, but they sometimes utilize instruments that historically weren't invented yet, like shamisen and glass windchimes.
• Scarface: The World Is Yours, despite taking place around 1983, has plenty of rock and hip-hop tracks from artists that didn't exist until the following decade, like Rob Zombie and Cypress Hill.
• In The Bard's Tale, the pub of the first town includes a group of drunk men who can be heard singing "Beer, Beer, Beer", a real life drinking song from the 19th century. The game is set in medieval Orkney Islands.
• Lake uses music released from 2015-2020, which you can hear on your radio and in the grocery store. The game is set in September 1986.

• Pacific Drive: the in-game radio, the only thing keeping driving through The Zone from being either terrifyingly bleak or bleakly terrifying, is full of songs by real life performers that didn't start recording until the 2020s. The game is set in 1998.

Western Animation

• Get a Horse! uses "Minnie's Yoo-Hoo" as the opening theme song for the black and white Mickey Mouse cartoon. The song debuted in the short "Mickey's Follies" and would be used as the opening theme song for the Mickey Mouse shorts starting with "The Jazz Fool"^note though the specific arrangement used in Get a Horse! would first be used in "The Fire Fighters", which also utilizes a different title card than the other shorts mentioned here, all of which came after the short "The Opry House", which was the last time Mickey was regularly gloveless as is seen in Get a Horse!.
• Rabbit Hood uses several songs that are out of place for its medieval setting, such as Rule Britannia! where Bugs disguises himself as the King and London Bridge is Falling Down, sung by a dazed and battered Sheriff of Nottingham after Bugs "knights" him. Both songs were composed in the 18th century^note Though earlier versions existed for the latter before the publication of the rhyme's modern form c. 1744. Of course, this was likely done for the Rule of Funny.

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