Spider-Man

For over sixty years, Spider-Man has remained one of pop culture's most beloved characters. Actors, generations and even the language of cinema change, but Peter Parker is always there, swinging between New York's skyscrapers with his web and his everyday problems. The success of the new film "Spider-Man: Brand New Day", which has relaunched the character in theaters worldwide, once again confirms just how capable the Web-Slinger is of reinventing himself without losing his identity.

The secret is only simple on the surface. Unlike many other superheroes, the Marvel character created by Stan Lee (writer) and Steve Ditko (artist), who first appeared in "Amazing Fantasy" (Vol. 1) No. 15 in 1962, wasn't born as an exceptional individual. Peter Parker is an ordinary kid, grappling with school, work, money troubles, complicated love life and the weight of responsibility. His superpowers don't erase his frailties — if anything, they often amplify them. It's precisely this blend of the extraordinary and the everyday that has made him the "superhero next door", the one it's easiest to see yourself in. From Stan Lee and Steve Ditko all the way to the films starring Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland, Spider-Man has always told the story of the difficult passage into adulthood, the conflict between personal desire and sense of duty, and the price to pay when, as Uncle Ben's unforgettable maxim teaches us, "with great power comes great responsibility".
It's no surprise, then, that a character built on unease, the search for identity and rebellion against convention has developed such a natural relationship with rock over time. More than most other superheroes, Spider-Man shares many of the themes running through rock music: alienation, double identity, a sense of inadequacy, the desire for emancipation, irony and the urge to defy the rules.

The classic theme song and the Ramones cover

Peter Parker's first encounter with music dates back to 1967, with the famous theme song of the animated TV series. Just a few notes and a few words are enough to recognize it instantly: “Spider-Man, Spider-Man/ Does whatever a spider can/ Spins a web, any size/ Catches thieves just like flies”. Written by Paul Francis Webster and Bob Harris, that theme has become one of the most famous in all of American pop culture, surviving decades of adaptations, remakes and reinterpretations.

The theme song has resurfaced several times on the big screen too. In the 2002 "Spider-Man" film it's used in its original 1967 version, while "Spider-Man 2" (2004) features a cover performed by Michael Bublé, also heard during the closing credits. In "Spider-Man 3" the melody returns once again in a scene celebrating the hero. With the 2017 reboot "Spider-Man: Homecoming", the theme is instead reimagined in an orchestral arrangement, accompanying the opening titles alongside the traditional Marvel logo intro.

The song's rock consecration, however, came in 1995, when the Ramones decided to record their own version for the compilation “Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits”. It was an almost natural choice. The song's structure, with its essential rhythm and the immediacy of its melody, seems to anticipate the language of punk. Joey Ramone and his bandmates reinterpret it without overhauling it, simply turning it into a perfect Ramones song. Someone once remarked that the theme song sounded as if it had been written even before Dee Dee Ramone started counting off his famous “one, two, three, four”. A different recording of the track was included on the American edition of the album “Adios Amigos” and later on the compilation “Weird Tales of the Ramones”. In this version the title appears without a hyphen, becoming “Spiderman”. The song became part of the Ramones' live repertoire and was even performed during the New York band's farewell concert, in 1996 at the Palace in Los Angeles, slotted into the setlist between “I Wanna Be Sedated” and “The KKK Took My Baby Away”.

But the bond between the New York band and Spider-Man doesn't end with that cover. In the following years their songs would also make their way into the films dedicated to the Wall-Crawler: “Blitzkrieg Bop” appears in “Spider-Man: Homecoming”, while “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” soundtracks some scenes in “Spider-Man: Far From Home”. A choice that works on a symbolic level too. The Ramones, like Peter Parker, belong to Queens, to New York's sidewalks, to neighborhood life, far more than to the mythological dimension typical of other superheroes.

The hard rock response

If punk found a natural ally in Spider-Man, hard rock also left its mark on his saga. In 2002 Aerosmith recorded a new version of the classic theme song for the first film directed by Sam Raimi. Steven Tyler swapped punk urgency for a more muscular reading, propelled by Joe Perry's guitars, who had already contributed to the theme of the Nineties animated series. It was the ideal way to carry the character over to the big screen while keeping a bridge to his television tradition.

But the flirtation with hard rock kept resurfacing through small details scattered across the films. Famous, for instance, is the scene in “Spider-Man: Far From Home” where Happy Hogan puts on Ac/Dc's “Back In Black” while Peter Parker is building a new costume, with the latter exclaiming with conviction: “I love Led Zeppelin”, hopelessly mixing up the band who actually wrote the song. A gag that perfectly captures the passing of the torch between Tony Stark aka Iron Man's generation and Peter Parker's.

A new generation of rockers

Sam Raimi's first “Spider-Man”, with Tobey Maguire in the title role, also marked one of the happiest meetings between superhero cinema and early-2000s rock. The soundtrack “Spider-Man: Music From And Inspired By” blends alternative rock, post-grunge, pop-punk and hard rock, entrusting the role of signature song to “Hero”, performed by Chad Kroeger of Nickelback alongside Josey Scott of Saliva. The single topped charts worldwide and ended up defining not just the film, but an entire era of superhero cinema. The music video helped fuel its success too: Kroeger and Scott performed on a skyscraper rooftop while Spider-Man swung between New York's buildings, in a perfect distillation of the era's aesthetic, all powerful guitars, spectacular editing and post-grunge atmospheres.

Among the most notable tracks on the compilation was also Stone Sour's “Bother”, written by Corey Taylor and initially credited to the singer alone in the soundtrack's first pressings. The tracklist was rounded out by artists such as Sum 41, Alien Ant Farm, The Hives, The Strokes, Theory of a Deadman, Black Lab and Injected, turning the record into a genuine snapshot of 2002 rock, when pop-punk, garage rock, nu metal and post-grunge still coexisted on the charts and on radio playlists. Rounding things off was also Aerosmith's new version of the classic Spider-Man theme.

The soundtracks kept following the character's evolution through the subsequent films as well. “Spider-Man 2” relied on names like Dashboard Confessional, Train, Hoobastank, Jet, Yellowcard and Taking Back Sunday, while “Spider-Man 3” veered toward more indie and alternative sounds with Snow Patrol, The Killers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wolfmother and The Flaming Lips, who delivered a successful new funked-up cover of the famous theme. As if Peter Parker were growing up alongside his audience, and the music had to reflect that journey somehow.

Spider-Man on Broadway with U2

More ambitious – if not outright pretentious – was U2's musical take on the Spider-Man myth with “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark”, the much-discussed Broadway musical penned by Bono and The Edge. The project's gestation was plagued by constant delays, script rewrites, technical problems and astronomical costs.
“Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark” was conceived as a colossal production, directed by Julie Taymor and starring Reeve Carney as Peter Parker. Bono explained that the idea of taking on a musical wasn't born out of a sudden interest in theater: “We were open to the idea of the musical, but Spider-Man is something different, because it's about comic books. There's been a whole network of relationships between punk rock, rock bands and comic books for years.” For the U2 frontman, Peter Parker is a figure surprisingly close to that of a rockstar: an ordinary kid who suddenly finds himself endowed with extraordinary powers, forced to live with a double identity and with all the responsibilities and pressures that come with unexpected fame.

When it officially opened on Broadway on June 14, 2011, “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark” had already gone down in history for a rather dubious reason: with 182 preview performances, it had racked up the longest preview period ever seen on Broadway at that point. The reviews were less scathing than those of the earliest performances, praising above all the spectacular stage effects and stunts, while offering a cooler assessment of the plot and the music.
The musical also became the most expensive production in Broadway history, with an estimated budget of around $75 million, a figure director Julie Taymor later disputed, claiming the costs had been greatly exaggerated. Despite the controversy, the show managed to draw huge audiences: in early 2012 it even set Broadway's weekly box-office record, surpassed only a few months later by “Wicked”. Box-office success, however, wasn't enough to offset the massive production costs, and “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” closed for good on January 4, 2014, leaving behind heavy financial losses.

Spider-Punk

In recent years the bond with music has become even more explicit thanks to Spider-Punk, the alter ego of Hobie Brown. He's not simply a Spider-Man with a guitar in hand, but a character built entirely around punk culture.
Spider-Punk first appeared in “The Amazing Spider-Man” #10 (January 2015), created by writer Dan Slott and artist Olivier Coipel. Behind the mask is Hobie Brown, a rebellious Spider-Man fighting the authoritarian regime led by Norman Osborn, turning punk's aesthetic and attitude into a genuine form of resistance.

The character reached a wider audience with the animated film “Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse” (2023), where he is voiced by Daniel Kaluuya. Thanks to his nonconformist look, his charisma and his anarchic attitude, Spider-Punk quickly became one of the film's most beloved characters, winning over critics and audiences alike, to the point of being regarded as one of the most successful and original variants of Spider-Man in the entire Marvel universe.

Brand New Day

The new chapter now in theaters, "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," carries on this tradition, using music as an integral part of the storytelling. After the events of "No Way Home," Peter Parker is forced to start from scratch: no one remembers who's behind the mask anymore, the relationships that once gave balance to his life now belong to the past, and the young hero finds himself alone defending New York, unable to rely on the people who were once closest to him.
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the film marks the start of a new trilogy with Tom Holland and brings Spider-Man back to a more intimate, urban dimension, grappling with street-level crime and a new threat set to test not only his abilities, but his very identity.

Once again accompanying this new turn is the music of Michael Giacchino, a composer now inextricably tied to the saga after scoring "Spider-Man: Homecoming," "Spider-Man: Far From Home" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home." Alongside the orchestral score, "Brand New Day" offers a soundtrack spanning different eras and genres, moving between soul, disco, alternative rock, indie, R&B and contemporary Latin sounds. Among the chosen tracks are "Wolf Like Me" by Tv On The Radio (which opens the film), "I'm Every Woman" by Chaka Khan, "Loser" by Tame Impala, "Fire For You" by Cannons, "EoO" by Bad Bunny, "St. Elmo's Fire" by Brian Eno and "Oh Yeah?" by Steve Lacy, weaving a sonic mosaic that accompanies Peter Parker's new beginning and once again confirms the close bond between Spider-Man and pop-rock music.

Few superheroes, in short, have managed to build such a deep and lasting relationship with music. From the Ramones to Aerosmith, from U2 to Ac/Dc, through the great soundtracks of the early 2000s and the explosion of Spider-Punk, rock has accompanied the evolution of Spider-Man almost as much as comics and film have. As if, deep down, Peter Parker and rock shared the same spirit.

Ride the wave of great music

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