14 fictional movie bands, ranked

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, Alan Parker’s The Commitments hit theaters. The Irish rock & roll comedy, based on Roddy Doyle’s novel of the same name, has attracted a cult following in the years since its release, and it picked up one nomination at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes that year, as well as four BAFTA wins — but how does it compete in a battle of made-up movie bands? In honor of a quarter-century of Dublin’s greatest fictional soul group, here’s a ranking of the bands at the center of our favorite let’s-start-a-rock-band movies, getting-the-band-back-together movies, and rock-band-on-the-road movies. Let the rock battle begin.

From the movie: Eddie and the Cruisers (Martin Davidson, 1983)

Personnel: Eddie Wilson (lead vocals, guitar); Joann Carlino (backing vocals); Sal Amato (bass); Wendell Newton (sax); Kenny Hopkins (drums); Frank “Wordman” Ridgeway (keyboards)

Best track: “On the Dark Side”

Eddie and the Cruisers sound considerably more like a band that was formed in 1983, when the movie was made, than any band that might have existed in 1963, when it takes place. For their blatantly Springsteen-ian sound (not to mention wardrobe) they lose all credibility.

From the movie: Frank (Lenny Abrahamson, 2014)

Personnel: Frank (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards); Jon (keyboards); Nana (drums); Baraque (bass); Clara (theremin)

Best track: Frank’s “Most Likeable Song Ever”

Soronprfbs is only slightly easier to listen to than it is to pronounce. Led by Frank (Michael Fassbender), an enigmatic genius who wears an enormous papier-mâché head over his own at all times, the experimental band spends years in a cabin in Ireland developing their sound and posting videos online, only to be invited to SXSW as something of a joke. We regret to rank such dedicated efforts so low, but Soronprfbs knows, better than any other band here, that popularity is a shallow measure of value, and sometimes creativity must be its own reward. 

From the movie: Rock Star (Stephen Herek, 2001)

Personnel: Chris “Izzy” Cole (lead vocals); Kirk Cuddy (rhythm guitar); A.C. (drums); Ghode (lead guitar); Jörgen (bass)

Best track: “We All Die Young”

When Chris (Mark Wahlberg) is elevated from obsessive fan and lead singer in a tribute band to actual singer of Steel Dragon, the heavy metal band he used to cover, he instantly enters the wild world of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. “You know I’m just a regular guy who grew up with the posters of these guys on my walls,” Chris, who has renamed himself “Izzy,” yells onstage. “And now I’m one of them!” Sure, he can make all the schmaltzy speeches he wants, but it’s clear that Steel Dragon is a soulless crew of unoriginal sellouts and Izzy is nothing more than a pawn, used for his soaring voice and flowing rock star hair. We admit that they are technically musically competent, but we can’t rank Steel Dragon any higher.

From the movie: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (Lou Adler, 1982)

Personnel: Corinne “Third Degree” Burns (lead vocals); Tracy Burns (guitar); Jessica “Peg” McNeil (bass)

Best track: “Join the Professionals”

The Stains themselves are, without question, fabulous. Their music, however, has some room for improvement. The all-girl punk band’s repertoire is seriously limited, and none of the three of them ever exhibits any notable musical ability. These are negligible flaws in the eyes of the legions of teenage girls who believe that lead singer Corinne (Diane Lane) — with her angsty rants, edgy style, and catchphrase “I don’t put out” — speaks for them. For us, though, while we deeply respect the Stains’ skunk-haired brand of proto-Riot grrrl feminism and ethos of “don’t get screwed; don’t be a jerk; don’t get had,” we can’t entirely overlook their musical shortcomings. Sorry, Stains. Don’t give up (or start putting out) just because you lost the battle.

From the movie: Josie and the Pussycats (Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, 2001)

Personnel: Josie McCoy (lead vocals and guitar); Valerie Brown (bass, backing vocals); Melody Valentine (drums)

Best track: “Spin Around” 

Haven’t you heard? Josie and the Pussycats are the new DuJour! The cat-eared girl group doesn’t just have that early 2000s style on lock — they also released a fairly substantial catalog (especially compared to a lot of the fake bands here) of appealing, girl-powered alt-pop-rock jams. We are reluctant to place them any higher, however, only because we can’t help but wonder: Do we actually like the Pussycats, or is that just the mass-brainwashing talking?

From the movie: Not Fade Away (David Chase, 2012)

Personnel: Douglas Damiano (lead vocals); Eugene Gaunt (lead guitar, backing vocals); Wells (rhythm guitar); various others

Best track: “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre”

Despite an excellent original song, “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” (written by Chase’s Sopranos pal, Steven Van Zandt), the Twylight Zones never really take off, starting and stalling and gaining and losing members until they fizzle completely. They don’t like hearing, repeatedly, that rock & roll is “10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration” almost as much as they don’t like feeling stuck in suburban New Jersey; they don’t want to go to Vietnam just a little bit more than they don’t want to live with their conservative parents. As a lens through which to examine the turbulent cultural and emotional life of American youth in the ‘60s, the Twylight Zones shoot to the top of the list. As a band that never leaves the garage, however, they lose the battle.

From the movie: That Thing You Do! (Tom Hanks, 1996)

Personnel: James “Jimmy” Mattingly II (lead vocals and rhythm guitar); Leonard “Lenny” Haise (lead guitar); Guy Patterson (drums); T.B. Player (bass)

Best track: “That Thing You Do”

On the one hand, The Wonders are so generic (a very common tale, indeed) their bass player doesn’t even have a name. On the other, good luck resisting “That Thing You Do,” the practically perfect pop-rock confection that launches the band to one-hit-wonderdom faster than you can say “I am Spartacus.” While savvy manager Mr. White (Tom Hanks) polishes (and renames) the quartet of “nice boys” with matching suits, personal gimmicks (shades!), and high-profile gigs, the Wonders were never built to last, and can only survive on the hype around one smash single for so long. Catchy though their limited output may have been, this band was never who any of them truly were; it was just another thing they did.

From the movie: Sing Street (John Carney, 2016)

Personnel: Conor “Cosmo” Lalor (lead vocals); Eamon (guitar); Ngig (keyboards); Larry (drums); Garry (bass)

Best track: “Drive It Like You Stole It”

Like so many great bands before, Sing Street was founded in an effort to impress a girl. From there, its members, a group of teenage misfits living in Dublin in the ‘80s, try on (quite literally) the personae of various English artists of the time. They eventually find their own voice and produce a string of delightful original songs (and accompanying videos, to varying degrees of success). Sing Street’s greatest purpose is as a (highly cinematic) vehicle for the coming-of-age of its young frontman, Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). And while it may not become the band its members dreamed of, Conor’s hope, pain, fear, and the joy of his first love can be heard in every note he sings.

From the movie: School of Rock (Richard Linklater, 2003)

Personnel: Dewey “Mr. S” Finn (lead vocals, guitar); Zack “Zack Attack” Mooneyham (lead guitar); Freddy “Spazzy McGee” Jones (drums); Katie “Posh Spice” (bass); Lawrence “Mr. Cool” (keyboards); Tomika “Turkey Sub” (vocals); Marta “Blondie” and Alicia “Brace Face” (backing vocals)

Best track: “School of Rock”

“What is this, some kind of gimmick?” a rock & roll show director asks School of Rock frontman/teacher Dewey Finn (Jack Black). The band loses some points because, yes, the whole children’s-private-school thing is pretty gimmicky. But at the same time, there’s no denying the fact that these preadolescent rockers are seriously badass, unbelievably accomplished musicians. Until they inevitably break up upon entering high school — at which point they will almost certainly attend separate magnet schools and devote all their energies to other extracurriculars and SAT prep and probably, in Freddy’s case, juvie — these mini-rock stars sure know how to stick it to the man.

From the movie: This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)

Personnel: David St. Hubbins (lead vocals, lead guitar); Nigel Tufnel (…also lead guitar); Derek Smalls (bass); Mick Shrimpton (drums); Viv Savage (keyboards)

Best track: “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight”

How to judge Spinal Tap? Obviously they’re “great.” But unfortunately — and perhaps more to the point — they’re also quite awful. To quote some of their contemporary critics: “The musical growth rate of this band cannot even be charted,” and “What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?”

So with all due respect to Spinal Tap’s legendary place in rock history as “one of England’s loudest bands” but acknowledging that their catalog is crude, sexist, and hopelessly clichéd and that their later creative output “[suffers] from a certain sameness that set in during Tap’s meteoric rise to the middle of the pack,” we place them, here, somewhere around…the middle of the pack. Because while it’s true that no other band can turn its amps up to 11, the better ones just don’t need to.

From the movie: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)

Personnel: Hedwig Robinson (lead vocals); Yitzhak; Skszp; Jacek; Krysztof; Schlatko

Best track: “The Origin of Love”

Determined to receive credit for having written the songs of the hugely successful rock star Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt), her former lover, the wildly talented, “internationally ignored” Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell) follows Tommy’s sold-out tour with her own group of misfits, playing the same songs in the same cities to substantially smaller crowds. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (named after an inch of her own flesh, the result of a botched sexual reassignment surgery) have the most personal material of any band here, and we give them enormous credit for baring their souls so completely onstage. Well, for baring Hedwig’s soul so completely, anyway — while her band is instrumental (no pun intended) in the success of the music, the transgender East German songstress is really the star of the show. 

From the movie: The Commitments (Alan Parker, 1991)

Personnel: Declan “Deco” Cuffe (lead vocals); Imelda Quirke, Natalie Murphy, and Bernie McGloughlin (backing vocals); Joey “The Lips” Fagan (trumpet); “Outspan” Foster (lead guitar); Derek Scully (bass); Dean Fay (alto sax); Steven Clifford (keyboards); Billy Mooney (drums); Mickah Wallace (drums)

Best track: “Mustang Sally”

A soul band from Northside Dublin — an improbable combination for which band manager and mastermind Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) has an inventive justification — made up of an unpredictable group of working-class young people, The Commitments express their Irish soul through the music of the black American artists of the ‘60s. They have some of the best chemistry of any band here and a lot of talent between them; what makes them so compelling is that they have little else. Alas, the Commitments couldn’t commit to each other any longer than it took to record enough music for one truly legendary movie soundtrack, and it’s a genuine shame to see the group self-destruct — or maybe it isn’t. Maybe success, as trumpet-player and resident wise old sage Joey “The Lips” Fagan (Johnny Murphy) observes, would have been too obvious: “This way, it’s poetry.”

From the movie: The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980)

Personnel: “Joliet” Jake Blues (lead vocals); Elwood Blues (lead vocals, harmonica); Steve “The Colonel” Cropper (guitar, backing vocals); Donald “Duck” Dunn (bass); Murphy “Murph” Dunne (keyboards); Willie “Too Big” Hall (drums); Tom “Bones” Malone (trombone, saxophone, backing vocals); Lou “Blue Lou” Marini (saxophone, backing vocals); Matt “Guitar” Murphy (lead guitar); “Mr. Fabulous” Alan Rubin (trumpet, backing vocals)

Best track: “Sweet Home Chicago”

When “Joliet” Jake Blues (John Belushi) is released from prison at the beginning of The Blues Brothers, he and his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) have one goal: To get their band back together. At first glance, Jake and Elwood might look like a pair of genuine doofuses, cruising around Chicago wearing skinny ties, fedoras, serious expressions, and Ray-Bans at all hours of the day. But music is their religion, and once the band is reassembled and rocking, their ridiculous wardrobe (and even more ridiculous dance moves) just makes them that much cooler.

While they are sometimes overshadowed by the host of legendary R&B musicians with whom they come into contact along the way — Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Ray Charles among them — they are more enhanced by these stars’ endorsements than they are dwarfed by the comparison. And of course, they also have the greatest champion of all on their side — they are, after all, on a mission from God.

From the movie: Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000)

Personnel: Russell Hammond (lead guitar); Jeff Bebe (lead vocals); Ed Vallencourt (drums); Larry Fellows (bass)

Best track: “Fever Dog”

Stillwater has to be number one. Though the band at the center of Almost Famous doesn’t have as many scenes of actual performance as some of the others in our battle, it is by far the most fully realized group of rockers here, and the music sequences we do see are some of the most authentic among all the movies represented. Outside of the music itself, from the squabble over who gets the most prominent position on a promotional t-shirt to the impromptu “Tiny Dancer” sing-along on Stillwater’s beloved tour bus, Doris, every moment is shaped by the bandmates’ complex relationships with each other, the road, and the “industry of cool” — and by their pure relationship with the music they love.

“From here on out, I’m only interested in what’s real,” disillusioned guitarist Russell (Billy Crudup) tells William (Patrick Fugit), the teenage journalist following them on their tour. For better or worse, Stillwater’s slow surrender to the fakery of the rock & roll lifestyle is the realest thing we’ve seen in any of these movies — and that’s the honest, unmerciful truth.