The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The red-lipped song that opens the film. The late-night double features O'Brien watched in a shabby old cinema in Hamilton are poured whole into this song.

• The lips on screen belong to Patricia Quinn, but the voice is O'Brien's. That mouth and voice have different owners already sounds like a signal that this film plays at twisting surface against substance.
• The lyrics reel off the titles of old films such as “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “King Kong.” It is a kind of tribute roll, declaring what this work owes.
• A 1950s doo-wop–style ballad set to a slow triplet meter (a swaying rhythm that splits each beat into three). It is thick with longing, as if drifting out of an old radio.
• It returns at the end of the film as a short repeat (reprise), framing the whole story. It is worth listening closely to compare what the song does at the beginning and at the end.

Brad and Janet's song as they walk through the rainy night toward the castle's light. A rarely quiet song for this film.

• The piano picks out calm chords evenly, painting footsteps in the rain. Amid the brash numbers, the song's simplicity stands out all the more.
• Janet sings first and Brad answers, then Riff Raff takes it up inside the castle. As the same melody passes from singer to singer, it grows unclear whether that light means rescue or a trap.
• The image of the light repeated in the refrain sounds ironic, given what is about to happen inside the castle.
• In the soundtrack credits, Richard Hartley shares the billing as the song's composer·arranger. You can hear the hand that broadened the small stage band's sound for the screen.

The dance number the castle's guests perform in front of Brad and Janet. The highlight is the moment the criminologist steps out of the study to call out the moves.

• It is built as a relay in which Riff Raff, Magenta, the criminologist and Columbia take over the song in turn. Drawing characters onstage one at a time, the song becomes their introduction.
• Midway, the narrator explains the dance steps in speech rather than song. This device, which turns the song into a dance manual, gave rise to the later tradition of audiences dancing along in theater aisles.
• Tap dance is woven into the verse sung by Little Nell as Columbia. The sound of stamping feet serves as a rhythm instrument.
• The original album sold poorly at first, but when this song caught on in nightclubs in South Africa, it led to the album being reimported into the United States.

The entrance song of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, descending in the elevator. The song that stamped the actor Tim Curry on the world's memory.

• Curry makes an entrance over a slow, swaggering piano rhythm. The unhurried beat shows physically that the master of the castle commands this space.
• Curry moves freely between a refined accent, as if mimicking royalty, and a rough rock-and-roll voice. It is worth listening for the moments when the manner of speech shifts even within a single bar.
• In the stage version, until around 1990, this song came before the dance number. After the film reversed the order, the stage followed suit.
• Throughout the song Brad and Janet are left all but speechless. The song's power to overwhelm its listeners is itself the substance of the scene.

Fifties-style rock and roll sung by Eddie as he bursts from the freezer on his motorcycle. He is the exact opposite of Rocky, the sleek creation.

• This is straight-ahead rock and roll led by the saxophone. The music of 1950s Saturday nights that O'Brien loved comes through here at its most unadorned.
• Meat Loaf played both Eddie and Dr. Scott in the 1974 Roxy production in Los Angeles, and he sang this song as Eddie in the film as well. You can hear his voice from before his great success as a rock singer.
• The guests dance along in delight, but Frank alone stands frozen. The tension of the scene lies in upbeat music and an ominous expression overlapping in a single frame.
• The song is about longing for days gone by. That theme of longing runs beneath the song's giddy beat.

The song in which Janet, drawn to Rocky, sings of her own desire for the first time. It is a moment that makes you wonder whether she is the same shy Janet from in front of the church.

• A bright song that resembles 1960s girl-group pop. What makes it fun is that it tells the opposite story in the same idiom as the innocent pop of the proposal scene.
• Columbia and Magenta, peeking in, serve as a chorus (a part answered in harmony), picking up the song from behind. Janet's confession becomes not a soliloquy but a spectacle.
• Susan Sarandon did not come from a background as a professional musical singer.

A medley in which the characters confess one by one on the stage Frank has dressed. The show song, the dream song and the chaotic rock and roll run together in a single flow.

• On the original album it is a medley (a string of songs joined together) running over 8 minutes, moving in turn through the floor show, a fanfare and the dream song, and a rough-refrained rock and roll.
• Columbia, Rocky, Brad and Janet each sing a verse over the same accompaniment. Setting different inner feelings to the same melody, it sums up the characters' night.
• When Frank's dream song arrives, the accompaniment slows and broadens. This is where the work says what it most earnestly has to say.
• There is a moment when the music suddenly breaks off at its peak. Listen to how heavily that break weighs on the next scene, and the design of this medley comes into view.

The homecoming song Frank sings alone after the show is cut off. The man who held sway over everything shows a lonely face for the first time.

• A cabaret-style torch song (a lyrical song of longing for what has been lost) stripped of glam rock's glitter. Its texture is so unlike the preceding numbers that the temperature of the scene shifts at once.
• Tim Curry sings this song plainly and without exaggeration. It is often cited as a superb performance that makes you see the character of Frank anew.
• The reason a song of homesickness is placed at this moment is tied to the ending. Listen again after you have seen the whole film, and the same song sounds different.