Goodfellas is notable for not having a score, but that certainly doesn't take away from its musical impact. All of the music contained in the film is licensed popular music or classical music, and indeed, Martin Scorsese is known for his deft use of recognizable songs to underscore his films to great effect. Goodfellas is a prime example of Scorsese's status as a film industry music buff. An article in Rolling Stone about the greatest film soundtracks of all time states, "He [Scorsese] basically invented the rock soundtrack as we know it, in gritty films like Mean Streets and Who’s That Knocking at My Door? But his 1990 classic Goodfellas is arguably the peak of his musical curating."
Scorsese's adept use of music in film dates back to the beginning of his career. From his first movie, 1967's Who's That Knocking on My Door?, in which he accompanied the action with pounding rock music, Scorsese made a name for himself as an expert at the perfect integration of music and storytelling. This is no accident. Scorsese was quoted as once saying, "When I was young, popular music formed the soundtrack of my life," and he is a known enthusiast of all popular music from the 60s through punk rock. In an article about Scorsese's skills with music, music journalist Alex Godfrey writes, "Scorsese doesn't just use music as a device. It isn't an afterthought, something to merely manipulate audiences, to heighten emotions—it forms the very fabric of his films, an inseparable part of his process." One of Scorsese's most iconic films, though often overlooked, is his concert documentary The Last Waltz from 1978, a filmed concert by The Band. Scorsese is deeply connected to music and it informs his work almost as much as story and character.
Goodfellas is a shining testament to Scorsese's understanding of music. The film contains 43 songs, all perfectly curated to match the action of each scene and give the audience a sense of the time period in which the action is taking place. The music supervisor for Goodfellas, Chris Brooks, is quoted in an article about the film's soundtrack as saying, " Marty once told me that he knew what all of the songs were going to be three years before he shot the film. There was no music supervisor. Marty is the music supervisor.” Scorsese knows music, and his knowledge is part of how he begins to imagine and put together a story. This is on full display in Goodfellas, right up until the final moment, in which he chooses his perhaps most idiosyncratic and anachronistic song, Sid Vicious's cover of the Frank Sinatra classic "My Way." Of the choice, Scorsese said, "I like Sid Vicious' version because it twists it, and his whole life and death was a kind of slap in the face of the whole system, the whole point of existence in a way." With the spirit of punk and rock and roll, Scorsese seeks to expose the cracks in the system, while vividly exploring the more unusual corners of society.
