Because of Nashville and All That Jazz and Cabaret, Phantom of the Paradise can be no better than the fourth-best American diegetic musical of the 1970s. However, and this is some comfort, the Phantom soundtrack is an absolute monster. It has one of the best original soundtracks not just of the 1970s, but in the whole history of American cinema. The bangers are absolutely wall-to-wall in this movie, from the pastiches to the rock anthems to the torch songs. Only one song in the movie is not diegetic, and that one, like every Oscar-nominated song from the 2010s seems to have been, comes from the closing credits.

That’s “The Hell of It,” performed by Paul Williams, with music and lyrics by Paul Williams. It is the only song that he performs for the movie, and that’s fitting. His Swan, the music producer who has the power to destroy lives from long distance and make stars of nobodies, is not necessarily all that musical himself. With his pudgy face made rounder with his schoolgirl haircut and his giant glasses, “spindly” is not a word that seems to befit Swan. But there’s no other way to describe the ghastly fingers which can grip Winslow’s throat while still reaching around to check his own pulse. There’s no other way to imagine the reach of his arms, the ongoing threat of his mind. Swan is a parasite, but he is the parasite that even the seeming stars envy, the one they are forced to grovel to no matter how wicked his actions are.

Swan does not survive the movie. By some foul trick, Winslow, who has lost the will to live as the Phantom, cannot die until Swan dies. Winslow’s death is a relief not just to him, but to us; he has been slashed and burned from the inside for so long that you can see the smoke rise from his throat whenever he speaks. Swan’s death, presumably, is just as permanent as Winslow’s. There’s plenty of the supernatural hovering about him, including the parts that have latched onto his melting face, and that supernatural passes, ghostly, into the end credits. “The Hell of It” is a diss track, a mocking memorial to the suckers like Winslow. Swan is not mourning himself, nor is he criticizing his own life from beyond the grave. The song is for Winslow, or for Beef, or perhaps even for Phoenix. Time is everything, the song tells us. “Winter comes and the winds blow colder/While some grow wiser, you just grew older.” Later: “And time’s a trick they can use to cheat you/And we’d only waste it anyway/And that’s the hell of it.” Fame is the only likely measure that a person has to gain a lifespan beyond the years of their descendants. It is easier to be famous than it is to be accomplished, certainly, and the blowhards with big dreams who wander into Swan’s web and beg for reward while sticking their backs and thighs to Swan’s trap are willing to trade in fame. Swan’s trick is that his victims are wasteful. Given that he too has a master, and that he must have signed his name in blood somewhere back there, it must take one to know one.