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Somewhere between Blondie and Jimi Hendrix, Juliette Lewis emits a mock sigh. “This feature already has made me upset because, no, you can’t pick just one song,” she says by phone from a hotel in New Orleans. It should come as little surprise that Lewis adores music so wholeheartedly—there’s her punk band, Juliette and the Licks, but there’s also a rock’n’roll sensibility that carries over to her roles. Throughout her nearly four-decade career, Lewis has excelled at playing characters driven by a fierce inner rhythm. Most recently, she has brought that unpredictable intensity to the role of Natalie, a hardened loner with a fierce loyalty, in Showtime’s runaway hit Yellowjackets. She even wore her own Amyl and the Sniffers shirt on the show, thinking that her character would be a fan of the Australian punk band.
Music has played a crucial role in Lewis’ life since her childhood, when she took piano and singing lessons—though she admits that she quit both because “inevitably, a teacher would say or do something I didn’t like.” Those initial experiences did help Lewis write her first song at 10, which she describes as “a tragic, one-finger-on-the-piano song wondering if anyone would notice if I wasn’t there.” She warbles out a verse from memory—“It seems awful to me/If I were to die/Everyone would wonder why”—and erupts into giggles.
Music-making took a backseat over the next two decades as Lewis became one of her generation’s most celebrated young actresses, spellbinding audiences in dramas like Natural Born Killers, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, and Cape Fear. (Her performance in the latter earned the then-18-year-old a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the Oscars.) Along the way she fell in love with bands like the Velvet Underground (“Ironically, I discovered them after I quit drugs”) and Nirvana (she describes Kurt Cobain as a “megawatt”).
At 30, Lewis honored her childhood music dreams by forming Juliette and the Licks, a rock’n’roll act with plenty of stage-diving and high kicks. After two full-lengths, the Licks went on hiatus in 2009, reforming now and again for touring. Lewis continued to release solo records under her own name, most recently 2016’s fiery Future Deep EP, and she’s currently working on new material with the Licks. While that comes together, Lewis continues to proclaim her love of music in other ways. Her Instagram is a tribute to the artists who shaped her, including Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, and the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde. “Music has always been a conduit to my feelings,” she says. “I always use music to get into something or to grow from something. I know I’m really depressed when I don’t crave music.”
Here, the 48-year-old artist runs down the songs and albums that have defined her life, five years at a time.
Donna Summer: “Hot Stuff”
Juliette Lewis: My parents split when I was two. It was very amicable, they were never feuding, but I did live for a good chunk of time with my mom while she was working in Florida. I remember quite literally laying on the floor of the apartment—the days of horrible maroon or brown ’70s carpet—with my ear to the radio speaker listening to Top 40. I just loved Donna Summer. Disco was happening and I got some fuchsia spandex disco pants. “Hot Stuff” sounded so jubilant and adventurous. It told a story of danger, and even at that age I wanted to get out of the drudgery of this little apartment. It was like Day-Glo listening to that song, my imagination became so vibrant and alive. I never stopped loving “Hot Stuff”; later in life, my band did a fun rock’n’roll cover of it.
Rickie Lee Jones: “Danny’s All-Star Joint”
Rickie Lee Jones is one of the unsung songwriter heroes. No one delivers language like her. “Danny’s All-Star Joint” is particularly delightful because, man, are there a lot of words in that song—and I know every single one of them. She’s almost scatting this story as if she’s chasing the words and then stumbling over them. This particular style is Iggy Pop, it’s Lou Reed, it’s that blend of spoken word storytelling and melody. The cadence creates the hooks. There is a real emotionality in the performance. She’s almost as powerful as the horn accents behind her. It not only showed me lyricism, but also that a vocal can be a real instrument. As a kid, I didn’t really know what she was saying but I would watch my dad sing every word. My dad’s influences really nurtured my creative self.
Miles Davis: Bitches Brew
Age 10 to 15 was quite an arc of identities. Musically, I went from new-wave alternative to early hip-hop to full on psychedelic Venice Boardwalk tie-dye Bob-Marley-shirt-wearing girl. I was into Jimi Hendrix, Patsy Cline, and everything in between, that’s where I landed at 15. I was living on my own with my best friend in a Hollywood apartment that my dad co-signed on, which shows you how avant-garde my parents were. Bitches Brew was everything under the sun, moon and stars to us. It’s almost like when you finally get Pink Floyd—well, you’re forever discovering Pink Floyd, they’re like a religion from the future. We would get all stoney and listen to that entire album. This was around the same time that I was watching Easy Rider every day. I was just branching out on my own and the world felt wide open.
The Cure: “Disintegration”
Some of the themes that I resonate the most with are what I call “guttural purging songs.” In “Disintegration,” this person is ripping his soul out: “Through the eye of the needle/It’s easier for me to get closer to Heaven/Than ever feel whole again.” Only later do you hear like, oh, he was using drugs. But to me, it was never about Robert Smith. I didn’t know him as an identity. It was just the song. I knew about the Cure from “The Love Cats” and I don’t think I heard Disintegration at the time of its release. I think my ex-boyfriend turned me on to them. I have no idea how it became my record but I listened to it pretty much for an entire year. I was just there, living and feeling exactly what that man wrote about. At 20, I was still addicted to pain and suffering. In hindsight, I had the world at my fingertips but I was so closed. Soon enough I quit making movies and did some deep self-fixing and reflecting. I stopped the machine that I didn’t even know I was being over-pressurized by.
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band: “Blinded by the Light”
Sometimes in interviews I get asked what song I would want to be played at my funeral, and it would be “Blinded by the Light.” To this day, that remains one of my go-to happy songs. The structure of the Manfred Mann version is bananas. “Blinded by the Light” is an entire movie in a song. I’ve never actually listened to the entire Bruce Springsteen version to know what he does, musically. Did he construct that whole thing where they slow down the tempo? Because that’s a whole other radical choice to do half time and then build it up. Then there’s the innocence and play from the little “Chopsticks” section in the middle. I always picture being in the audience and getting really dreamy and then big and powerful. And there’s that lyric! I think that’s what hooks me: when I’m at my happiest I am blinded by the light.
The Killers: “Mr. Brightside”
When I was 30 I realized that I didn’t do the thing that lived in the heart of the little girl with her ear pressed to the radio, who dreamed about being onstage. I had been locked into film and the cycle of finding success and thinking that I couldn’t leave. I finally figured it out, like find a guitar player or a drummer, see if you can write. There was no management, no label. I was literally calling people asking if they knew anyone who would want to write a song. And then I met Todd Morse [of the punk band H20] and we started figuring stuff out in my living room.
We’d just started playing shows and booking festivals as a little curiosity act band. The Killers were starting to get big with “Mr. Brightside” and they represented a lot of what I loved musically. I loved Brandon [Flowers]’s keys and his use of synths that’s a little bit retro but sounds completely fresh. The lyricism is imperfect and wonky but tells a very visual story. I started becoming aware of nuanced drum playing from Ronnie Vannucci. It was like, here’s a band that’s doing it, who created their own sound. We played a lot of the same festivals and ended up opening for them at a one-off show in Italy. That was an exciting time for music: the Killers, Jet, Kings of Leon, the Hives. We were just the little underdog band but we were right there with all those guys.
Iggy Pop: “The Passenger”
People would sometimes compare my stage presence to Iggy, but I didn’t get into Iggy until after the fact. My inspiration came more from David Lee Roth—my eyes lit up watching him do air splits in the “Panama” video. So Iggy came later when we were in the grind of touring. “The Passenger” was the soundtrack to what I was quite literally experiencing, being a passenger in these vans and looking at the world through these daring eyes. It’s a very meditative song. There’s only a change or two and you’re just riding it out.
I became a true Iggy disciple when I saw him and the Stooges perform at Fuji Rock Festival in 2007. It blew my mind because he is a mashup of danger and joy. There’s this total unpredictability, but he’s also playful and funny like a kid. I have a picture where he’d just come off the stage and he has this white towel around his neck. We were all walking to get the shuttle back to our hotel and I accosted him and gave him a hug. This is pre-cellphone cameras and someone happened to take our picture right at that moment. I look so happy, I have the craziest fan eyes.
Ludovico Einaudi: “Time Lapse”
I like to say that God is in the radio. Crazy people probably say that too, but I do feel like if you are open and listen at opportune times, something will come through. One day I was driving and some station that I never listen to was playing this song, which is by an Italian pianist. I had to get the whole album and I listened to that when I was reforming my band around six years ago. “Time Lapse” has this sense of expectation in it, like something is about to happen. It sounds like you are on the edge of something end-of-the-worldish. Isn’t it neat when you discover someone innocently?
Cat Power: “Nothin But Time” [ft. Iggy Pop]
How do I talk about this woman? The resonance in her voice is so vast, you’re living in a field of space when she’s singing. I discovered this song last year and it really spoke to where I’m at now, even though she’s talking to a kid in the song. One of the things you realize when you get older is that you’ve really got nothing but time. Once you’re not sweating all the stuff about age anymore—am I too young, am I too old?— there’s freedom in that. And that’s what this song feels like. It’s so hopeful. You can rethink your journey at any time.
