The first film to make use of rock"n"roll in film was probably The Blackboard Jungle in 1955, which used Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock". Rock"n"roll was originally used as source music to provide" social colour" (Tagg, p.1), and the genre became synonymous with the new youth culture that was emerging in the mid-5Os. The use of rock"n"roll in film helped fuel negative attitudes towards youth culture, especially in films such as Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock (1957), where youth culture was characterised by juvenile delinquents, and therefore with rebellion and anarchy.

Popular music is also used to provide local or historical colour, particularly in films that are based around music and set during a certain period, e.g. films such as La Bamba (1987, based in the late 1950s) and Dirty Dancing (1987, based in the summer of 1963). Rebellion seems to be a common theme in these two films, the characters of Dirty Dancing rebelling against parental pressure and Richie Valens (Lou Diamond Phillips) rebelling against the music industry's prejudice against South American artists in La Bamba.

Other films used to portray contemporary youth cultures include Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Loved Up (1995, BBC film), both of which use dance music both as source music and as an "underscore" to represent the social groups involved, social groups that are still considered rebellious, even though the style of the music used has changed. Films such as Loved Up and Trainspotting (1996) are based around young people that take drugs (or, with Trainspotting, trying to give up drugs), and therefore the music chosen for the film should in some way represent drug-taking, the characters who take drugs, the society which condones/condemns the consumption of drugs, and, perhaps more importantly, the attitude of the filmmaker(s) towards the whole situation. Most of the music heard in Loved Up is used as source music, either in night-clubs or in bedrooms, and most (if not all) of the music is of the techno genre, a genre which is still linked with the consumption of the drug Ecstasy. Taking Ecstasy is often referred to as "getting loved up", so the links with the drug are made clear from the very start of the film.

Even the music used in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) is similar in that it represents a distinctive social group, the blend of 1960s Dusty Springfield ("Son of a Preacher Man") instrumental guitar music (Hank Marvin) and contemporary underground music suggesting a hip, ultra-cool society. Pulp Fiction is another film which tackles the consumption of drugs, in this case heroin and cocaine as well as cannabis.

The media furore surrounding films such as Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting and Loved Up suggests that drugs have become (or have remained) an important symbol of youth culture and rebellion against polite society, and this idea is firmly rooted in early films and their portrayal of youth culture by the use of popular songs in their soundtracks. These earlier films include the "great" films of the hippie era, such as the bike movie Easy Rider (1969) which contained music by Hendrix and The Band, and Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild", and the documentary film Woodstock (1969/70) which also features music by Hendrix, as well as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, The Who and Joan Baez.

It seems that most music subcultures have had films based around them to some extent, films such as Singles which used music from the "grunge" scene that grew out of Seattle (the city in which the film is based) with the success of bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam; the American "gang" movies of the late Eighties whose soundtracks were mostly made up of hip hop and rap music (these films include Sean Penn's Colors and spoofs such as Kid'n'Play's House Party and Damon Wayan's I'm Gonna Git You, Sucker); Mersey beat films such as Backbeat (1995, not to mention the films that the Beatles made), and punk films such as The Sex Pistols" The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle.

Many of the films listed above use popular music mainly for a "non-underscore" function, in that the music appears mostly as source music, either being performed (as with La Bamba, The Great Rock"n"Roll Swindle, Backbeat, and others such as Grease, This Is Spinal Tap, Fame, The Commitments and the guitar solo at the prom scene in Back To The Future), being danced to (as in the theme pub scene in Pulp Fiction, most of Saturday Night Fever and Dirty Dancing, the nightclub scenes in Trainspotting, Loved Up, Basic Instinct and numerous teen movies), or simply being listened to (background music in coffee shops, shopping malls, bedrooms etc.).

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