I Only Have Eyes For You

Sofia Kourtesis “By Your Side”

One bit of film critic wisdom I hear repeated a lot is the idea that a movie shouldn’t overtly reference a far better film because it’s basically asking the audience to think about how much better than film is than what they’re watching. I don’t think that logic totally applies to music – nods to other songs in the form of interpolations and samples mostly just integrate warm feelings towards the source material into one’s reaction to the new song. The more analogous thing is probably when an artist with bad or middling material covers much better artists, since you have more of a stark contrast of their attempt at songwriting and the compositional talent of someone else.

I bring this up because one of the several samples floating around in Sofia Kourtesis’ “By Your Side” is a man announcing The Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes for You.” It’s not a sample of the song, just someone mentioning the existence of this widely beloved pop classic. This ought to trigger the problem that happens with referentiality in film, but it doesn’t – for one, Kourtesis’ own composition is very beautiful and highly effective as a dance track, so it succeeds on terms entirely unrelated to The Flamingos’ song. The nod to “I Only Have Eyes for You” doesn’t undermine anything about “By Your Side.” Being reminded of the Flamingos song in a non-musical way has the effect of drawing a line between these two seemingly unrelated works, highlighting the way these two very different songs share a similar sort of heavenly romantic ambiance.

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