Does it bother you when music gets associated with stupid tv shows/movies?

lol

I defy anyone to argue with a straight face that Chris Pratt flying around in his spaceship listening to sentimental mixtapes is somehow stupider than Pitchfork running a review of the Slanted & Enchanted reissue that was handwritten on notebook paper. Both are ridiculous, and it's awesome! Sometimes music makes people act ridiculous. If you want a life that is broad enough to encompass both music *and* other people, you make your peace with that fact pretty quickly.

The only one that's ever bothered me is "Lust For Life" being used in a cruise commercial for years so when I hear it I get a mental image of a helicopter shot of a giant white cruise ship.

I hate it when it's like a tap on the shoulder - "hey, we all love this tune, don't we?" Or I'm supposed to be bowled over at the unexpected musical vistas that are opened up by someone covering some old warhorse on a ukulele.
When I was a teenager I felt in was unjust that most of the music I loved was invisible; now I often cringe if I hear music I know interpolated into a show. Media has become so overweighted with cultural overtones instead of creating moment-by-moment engagement.

Bernard expresses my own view pretty succinctly: "fortunately music is strong enough to withstand it." I posted an Airbnb commercial today that uses "Shelter from the Storm." There are people who will hear the song that never would have heard it otherwise. Maybe they won't even notice, or maybe they'll love it and proceed from there.

I don't mind it at all. It's no different than a DJ dropping a great song into a set: when it's done well and at the right moment (like lots of music cues in "The Americans," for example) it can be perfect. And a great song-based soundtrack can capture the mood or vibe of a movie or TV show without necessarily being linked to specific scenes (hence some "songs inspired by ..." collections), and of course at the same time it can give music a new life by way of fresh context. For example, when I was picking up a kid from something today and "Mr. Blue Sky" came on, she asked, "wasn't this from a Marvel movie?" I'd much rather her hear a good song because of a Marvel movie or whatever than not at all. (Related, I have friends that *hate* ELO because of bad memories of being stuck in the back of a car during long car trips and hearing the same songs on AM radio over and over again.)

What I don't like is when it's lazy, like, I dunno, Scorsese using "Gimme Shelter" three times.

I don’t care how people discover music. That’s not what I’m talking about…

“(like lots of music cues in "The Americans," for example)”

Lol I shouldn’t have started this thread. I know I have brain damage. I just think it’s almost always corny as hell when this is done whether the song is good or not.

Brain Damage / Eclipse? You should hear the Velvet Revolver cover!

I was pretty whatever on the Kate Bush/Stranger Things deal until I saw like 3 basic ass Instagram reels pushed on me by IG in a day featuring Running Up That Hill and I wanted to push the “nuke the kids, normies, and anyone else associated” button.

My friend told me he saw a bad Pink Floyd cover band play it the other week but that struck me as more funny than anything.

it's annoying if whatever movie/tv show/advertisement a song becomes associated with somehow eclipses the songs original intent/context/general vibe

Clemenza - there's also an airbnb ad with a Spanish-language cover of "Walk on the Wild Side," lol

There are degrees of association.

When I saw "GTA Liberty City" comments under Selah Collins' "Pick A Sound" on youtube I thought "huh, fair play that music supervisor."

also I don't mind Misirlou being very heavily associated with Pulp Fiction, John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson completely eclipsing any images of surfboards when it comes on

Pulp Fiction supplanted by that Black Eyed Peas song anyway, alas

yikes

My kid was watching Sing 2 and Mercury Rev jam from Deserter’s Songs played during a scene. I was pretty surprised.

well if you make your record sound like a disney movie

I don't watch a lot of movies, but I definitely value soundtracks over actual songs. If it's a comedy I don't mind, it's usually harmless and trashy. But when you can hear the director showcasing his taste, trying to make his own three-minute video clip, or worst of all, trying to elevate a climatic moment with a super predictable / hackneyed music placement, I cringe. I blame the few who did it well: Lost in Translation, Trainspotting or whoever started that trend.

I also resent it when the first google result for a novel that I have just read is the film adaptation that I haven't seen. I guess it's an issue of making one art a subsidiary of the other, the unwanted, random, arbitrary nature of the associations, especially when the end result is "worse" than the source material and distorts it.

This has been happening long enough now that I know my annoyance at hearing Minutemen or Buzzcocks in a car commercial or whatever is fleeting, because my memory of the commercial will fade and I'll largely stop associating the song with it after a while. Score one for getting old.

I also resent it when the first google result for a novel that I have just read is the film adaptation that I haven't seen. I guess it's an issue of making one art a subsidiary of the other, the unwanted, random, arbitrary nature of the associations, especially when the end result is "worse" than the source material and distorts it.

Xpost: yeah I have terrible memory regarding tv shows/ads/movies but great musical memory. As time passes only the memory of the song itself remains and not where I heard it first.

That said, using great music to try to elevate your shit movie/ad is obviously a dud.

But if it gets younger audiences to discover their new favorite artist then why not.

Skateboard drinking juice guy on tiktok revived Fleetwood Mac and Stranger Things revived Kate Bush and I don’t mind it at all. Sure hearing “oh the stranger things” song will be annoying but if it gets only 1% of the newfound KB audience to listen to more songs of her and become fans I’m happy.

I now like to claim that Volkswagen single-handedly gave us Nick Drake, which is probably false

Also VW created The Books

Or was that Jeep?

I actually don't like the idea that artists need to be revived, as opposed to living and dying "naturally" on their own strength, probably an ideal that is in complete denial of commercial realities. I just can't help thinking that the extra 1% Kate Bush fans is an artificial and ephemeral relevance that cannot sustain her much more than her own records have already done. But I guess they do and it's egoistical if those people were not going to discover Kate Bush otherwise. I also probably have to accept that the million SW prequels and sequels have contributed to the legacy of the original franchise. It's just tough to see that new generations need new products to connect to older products. Gosh I sound old.

Then again not everyone has the chance to discover Kate Bush through posts on online music communities like I did :)

It doesn’t ruin a song for me if it is presented to a wider audience via a movie - In fact John Waters movies introduced me to a rich seam of music I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise, and I couldn’t care less how a gatekeeper of those genres felt about it.

Songs being used for adverts on the other hand are generally sullied forever. I especially hate the current trend of using a section of a song, then skipping out a few lines or bars of that section to fit in the advert space. Just use another song, there are millions out there!

Maybe this should go in the "Post a controversial music opinion" thread: I wish all directors and music supervisors would make a pact to limit their needle drops to songs with fewer than a certain number of Spotify streams (10,000,000 seems reasonable, although I'd be fine with 1 million). Maybe being a late-period Gen Xer, where much of my music-listening years predated the era where you had the near-complete ability to hear (and avoid) whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, makes my view outmoded among modern generations. But with the astronomical number of great songs being released every week, in addition to the yet-to-be-unearthed catalog tracks out there, there's just no reason to throw the same billion-stream warhorses at us year after year.

It seemed such a weird choice for Ms. Marvel to start off with that Weeknd song that's been inescapable for a few years.

Yeah that was a minus for me (just b/c I don’t like the song).

Xxpost: oh I know the revive probably doesn’t do that much financially for artists. I meant it more on a cultural level, always happy to connect with other generations via a mutual music understanding.

Then again not everyone has the chance to discover Kate Bush through posts on online music communities like I did :)

When I was watching the Batman movie, I texted my friend: “lol, this movie has another brooding Nirvana cover”… and he was like, “Uh, that’s actually Nirvana”

I winced when I heard "Corona" on Jackass and "In The Street" on the 70s Show, but knowing that the Boon Family and Alex Chilton were getting royalty checks made it easier to take.

I definitely hate it when a piece of music gets associated with actually crap media, and I confess sometimes I get a bit narky about something that is "my thing" being exposed too widely (this is a failing of mine, nothing to be proud of). I also would like it if more films had proper scoring, though I've got nothing against the jukebox soundtrack style, not really. There are definitely times when it comes across as smug showing-off, but a lot of the time it works well. My desire for scoring is more about having more new and interesting things to listen to, rather than a deep hatred of the other option.

In general, I reckon this is a p minor thing to be bothered about.

I don’t think this is some hipster “let me have my special snowflake shit” thing. I’ve never seen the Italian Job and this cover is the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Yet this still annoys me for some reason! It’s like, music as just a fucking data field or something.

― brimstead

honestly i'm feeling like caping for the "special snowflake" shit! a lot of music for me is _social_, is contextual, is linked to where and how i've heard it, what it's meant to me over the years. where and when you first hear a song is only part of that story, but for a lot of songs it's like the whole story. people here "running up that hill" in a popular tv show i've never seen and you know i think that's awesome, i think more people _should_ hear kate bush and a lot of those folks will go on to, i don't know, be the sort of folks who used to hang out on rec.music.gaffa back in the day. their finding out about kate bush through that show isn't any less meaningful than my first encountering kate bush by seeing the "cloudbusting" video played one day on american mtv while i was home sick from school and thinking of it as some weird sort of fever dream for decades afterwards. i think there's some sort of... experiencing a song, every time i experience it it takes on something of the qualities of the way in which i experience it, and not just songs. the context within which any of us hear something controls its meaning.

so for instance francis of assisi, he had a choice between being denounced and his followers hunted down and killed by the church like the cathars or making a sort of peace with the church and being co-opted as a tool of the clerical oppression he opposed. i mean i never knew "money" as anything but a kind of stupid bullshit song that was overplayed on "classic rock radio", having it used in the italian job doesn't bother me any more than that... remember the cover of "another brick in the wall" that was used in class of '99? anybody? i'm sorry, that shit was hilarious. and people were so fucking mad about it and to me that music had been co-opted so hard by that point that it was nothing to me. maybe it meant something to other people, maybe it was deeply meaningful radical statement against oppression to other people, and if they're mad about it i think they got the right to be, it's just not something i'm gonna be mad about myself.

does any of that make sense?

The world is gonna ruin your special precious thing. If it hasn't happened yet, it will. Nothing will be spared. One day there'll be a Netflix show where someone will be listening to Jandek. Here's the thing, though... Directors and music supervisors put songs in shows because they like them too. So getting upset about this really boils down to "Oh, crap, the wrong sort of people like the same thing I like! Does this mean I'm an asshole like them?"

Link to a brief thread I started last year, since it's relevant: YouTube comments where people originally learned about the song from a video game.

In terms of the video game references, I'm just completely amused by it, rather than bothered. Shitty movie soundtrack song covers piss me off to no end. The fact that there's a group of people who seen the Italian Job enough times to associate the shitty Velvet Revolver cover with brings it back to hilarity though.

The weird thing is, I LOVE how the songs are used in marie antoinette.

probably don't care about this phenomenon unless it results in a song I really getting overplayed so much I don't want to hear it any more.

mainly just surprised there was a remake of The Italian Job and lots of people seem to have seen it, at first I was like didn't Money come out in the 70s

The weird thing is, I LOVE how the songs are used in marie antoinette.

Well, sure, because Marie Antoinette is one of the greatest movies ever and the soundtrack is a huge, huge part of that.

I used to be so precious about this but I stopped caring completely around the time vaporwave took over my musical life in 2016

I found it amusing when Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" got used in Watchmen, as I had several friends screaming about the "terrible cover" of Hallelujah, then coming back minutes later sheepishly saying "I had no idea this was the original"

I quite like videogames for this. I think that and a tv show opening theme are a good way to get people to open up to something new. I just wish there was more selections of musicians who need the exposure more, it's often bands who are already rich.

Some of the most nauseating uses of music was that trend of videogame adverts using serious songs. Remember that Gears Of War advert that used the Gary Jules cover of "Mad World"? And somebody wrote a dumb thinkpiece about how that song usage shed light on the profound depths of the game? I hope everyone involved gets frequent embarrassment attacks from the memory of it.

The world is gonna ruin your special precious thing. If it hasn't happened yet, it will. Nothing will be spared.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

thanks dad

I found it amusing when Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" got used in Watchmen, as I had several friends screaming about the "terrible cover" of Hallelujah, then coming back minutes later sheepishly saying "I had no idea this was the original"

That's when you've got to really WELL AKSHUALLY them and explain that Buckley covered the John Cale version.

“The world is gonna ruin your special precious thing. If it hasn't happened yet, it will. Nothing will be spared.”

similar vibe:

”Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.”

(Music cue: Hallelujah, Hallelujah…)

My desire for scoring is more about having more new and interesting things to listen to, rather than a deep hatred of the other option.

This was my first thought too.

I guess 'Baby Driver' comes to mind as an example of a jukebox style soundtrack- when that cane out, a friend asked me how come all of a sudden every time he goes to a bar in Brooklyn he hears 'Bellbottoms' by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and everyone in the place goes mad for it.

I love the track and loved the movie and thought it put the jukebox sountrack and 'Bellbottoms' in particular to excellent use. And I don't think the movie "changed" the song by adding to it or casting it in a new and different light, for better or worse. It's just that there are certain associations with a song, not so much the personal kind of associations but a cultural context that can be complex and nuanced, or subtleties around an artist. And that language of hyperlinks within a song can be engulfed by its placement in a movie. That stuff is in there to be discovered, sure, but it feels alienating and unpleasant to realize that a song you love doesn't actually need all the things you've taken away from it.

There were a few songs 'Baby Driver' made me want to revisit, and for the most part they were the songs I'd only experienced and understood as part of jukebox style comps such as "Rockin 70's"

Marie Antoinette reminded me that "I Want Candy" is basically an unfuckwithably perfect pop song.

The 24 Hour Party People liner notes ("what were 'liner notes,' Grandpa?) Recounts how Tony Wilson was watching the movie Heat. When the Moby cover of "New Dawn Fades" came in, he was like, "fuck me, it's one of ours!"

Etc.

People discover things the way they encounter them. Let a thousand different ways of engaging with music bloom.

I recently accompanied a teenaged singer on "Make You Feel my Love" and she introduced it as an Adele song. I successfully repressed any impulse to ACKSHUALLY that moment. It was freeing.

It seemed such a weird choice for Ms. Marvel to start off with that Weeknd song that's been inescapable for a few years.

― rare lipstick or mohawks that somehow make them more valuable (President Keyes), Wednesday, June 15, 2022 9:58 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i read this as ms. maisel hahaha

they'll always have baker street

I don't remember specifics, but I think "Baker Street" was used pretty well in Mindhunter. Sorry, Stealer's Wheel fans.

I associate Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” with grocery stores more than with Reality Bites nowadays

Think of the poor Stealers Wheel fans!

Haha... fwiw, I meant the ultimate "Lynch example"; though I guess superfans of the Platters' "My Prayer" may have a similar beef.

I don't remember specifics, but I think "Baker Street" was used pretty well in Mindhunter.

And used very strangely in Good Will Hunting, where it fades up during a fistfight and fades back out maybe 30 seconds later. Was it coming from a car driving past?

The one show that absolutely nails this is Malcolm in the Middle

― frogbs,

The visual realism of Malcom in the Middle was totally striking at the time, right?? Considering the dialogue was expositional and very stylized. It would have been a VERY different kind of show if they'd modeled its entire universe after a single "consumer aesthetic" like Frasier, or dressed everyone like a Banana Republic threw up.

"Kiss Me" was inescapable for a time, but i rarely hear it now (and my local supermarket recently switched to an eclectic 90's hits station from a kinda Yacht Rock station). So rarely, in fact, that i have forgotten it exists for years at a time between exposures, thank you so very much for the reminder.

Oh yeah, they had that inverse Hallelujah song that sounds like it's about sex but it's really about god. Ick.

Insofar as I can make out what they're saying, it seems to be about the experience of being awestruck and humbled in various situations, historical, mythical, or personal, so soulful and reverential doesn't seem that inappropriate to me

It's, not to sound too glib, about the sacred in the profane, with these dry, conversational statements leading into more proclamatory, spiritual lines as you head into the chorus. It also has all of these comedic lines that only really work with the pauses Cohen gives them (you say I took the name in vain/I don't even know the name/but if I did/well really what's it to ya?"; "you don't really care for music do ya?"). You need a conversational, chanson-style delivery to make that stuff work, it doesn't if you just sing it in quick succession.

I've not heard the Cale version but the Buckley and Wainwright flatten all these complexities into versions where it basically all sounds like a hymn and the spikiness, the sardonic side, the back and forth of it disappears. Meanwhile, "croak and casio preset" gives the lines full space to unfold and contributes to the song's ambiguous appeal; they make me constantly wonder "is this guy FOR REAL?", and that's what the song is designed to do.

A lot of that early 60's Pop sounded spooky and otherworldly to me before I ever saw a David Lynch film - he just kind of created a retroactive genre in the same way film noir or yacht rock did imo.

The songwriters and publishers certainly won't mind.

This discussion of “Hallelujah” now makes me want to go back and listen to the original, thx. Maybe now somebody can explain “Suzanne” to me, which I always thought of as a vastly inferior “Little Wing,” although I do like the Fairport Convention version and maybe the Roberta Flack one too.

Also Wikipedia WTF:

Martin Sharp wrote the lyrics for Cream's "Tales of Brave Ulysses" to the melody of this song, specifically the Judy Collins version. Eric Clapton later set Sharp's lyrics to his own music

This one’s for Leonard!

I’m sure it’s in a lot of tv shows and movies, so not a total derail, although I couldn’t tell you which.

A lot of that early 60's Pop sounded spooky and otherworldly to me before I ever saw a David Lynch film - he just kind of created a retroactive genre in the same way film noir or yacht rock did imo.

― Daniel_Rf

Since I first heard it I've thought that Dick and Dee Dee's "The Mountain's High" sounded particularly Lynchian.

Talking of Gerry Rafferty, I reckon 'The Ark' would make an amazing sync track for a movie.

”Tales of Brave Ulysses”

The crossover here is that Leonard-haters feel he has also been responsible for torturing their naked ears.

Appropriate well-chosen song + good film, obviously fine. May enhance pleasure of song.
Good song + bad film, also fine. This will pass from my mind and in the meantime I will shout at the screen to accuse the film of cheap piggybacking.
There are funny inbetween cases that stick in my mind tho'… like I was enjoying Palm Springs well enough, and then Barracuda by John Cale soundtracks a big montage… & I'm sort of thinking this is surprising and good to hear and I'm not sure it quite works, but actually maybe it does and it's great. Basically a slight dissonance or confusion means it's taken over Barracuda much more effectively than if it were a perfect or terrible choice.

Best version of "Suzanne":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21472M8p9E

The visual realism of Malcom in the Middle was totally striking at the time, right?? Considering the dialogue was expositional and very stylized. It would have been a VERY different kind of show if they'd modeled its entire universe after a single "consumer aesthetic" like Frasier, or dressed everyone like a Banana Republic threw up.

― The 25 Best Songs Ever Ranked In Order (Deflatormouse), Friday, June 17, 2022 1:39 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

that's why I loved the show from the start - as someone who grew up lower-middle class in the Midwest their house & especially their wardrobe was very spot on. they really nailed the "whatever's cheapest at the thrift store" aspect. with some of Malcolm & Reese's shirts I swear I owned the same one

the first episode of Stranger Things has two Jefferson Airplane songs (plus Pearls Before Swine and the Seeds)

― rare lipstick or mohawks that somehow make them more valuable (President Keyes), Thursday, June 16, 2022 4:28 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I'd forgotten about the Seeds! When I first watched it I had to rewind to make sure I didn't imagine that.

Also, S3 finale has Jackie Wilson's "(You're Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher."

Just read last night that Ivo wouldn't let the Amazing Spiderman film use This Mortal Coil despite the director (a big fan) begging him. That was a good call but why did This Mortal Coil appear on Brooker's Newswipe? Because hearing it over images of politicians is honestly one of the times a music usage has bothered me most.

It was like hearing my sacred music in an advert for dog shit

(Your personal feeling aside,) I’m not sure I see a disconnect: by 2010ish Ivo could plausibly have been familiar with and enjoying Brooker’s work for over a decade (TVGH started in 1999), vs probably not being so swept away by 500 Days Of Summer that the head of 4AD would give Sony a free pass at his own work?

It does, but not in the ownership sense. As the OP points out, whenever a song is revived by popular media the Youtube comments become flooded with "like this comment if you were brought here by (podcast / youtube streamer / film" etc. The occasionally witty comments are buried and the world becomes a blander, less interesting place. I suppose in the long run the new comments are displaced by a newer set of comments, but the flavour of the comments devolves from original jokes to flat cultural references.

For example, the comments underneath Aldous Harding's "The Barrel" on Youtube used to be funny. They amused me. Some of them made me wish I was as smart and witty as the commentator. So there was a mixture of pleasure (at the funny comment) and pain (at the knowledge that other people are funnier than me) and I find that combination appealing. In fact "The Barrel" itself is a mixture of pleasure and pain. Aldous Harding in general is a mixture of pleasure and pain. Pleasure, because she has a soothing voice, but pain, because she periodically sends me shards of broken glass in the post with sods of earth and enigmatic postcards that reference my failure to win XCOM: EW: Long War without cheating.

After three years the comments underneath that video have been diluted, but there are still gems. But imagine if the song was featured in a podcast, or a Youtube stream. The comments would just become page after page of "I heard this in (podcast)" or "I heard this in (youtube stream)" or "I heard this in (film)". Or "My former partner loved this song, we played it at our wedding (pause) she died, please click the like button". That would be pain and pain. Double pain.

Double pain, because that kind of comment is unentertaining, and it reinforces the sad fact that most people aren't interesting, and also that the vast majority of commentators on Youtube are spambots advertising something. Which is sad, because a world with boring people is a boring world.

You know, that's why I occasionally participate here at Ilxor. It has a mixture of people who are entertaining - but less entertaining than me, so they aren't intimidating - and people who really are more entertaining than me, but that's not so bad because Pagliacci needed a Pagliacci, do you know what I mean? He needed a super-Pagliacci who was a tier higher than him, and presumably super-Pagliacci needed a super-mega-Pagliacci, or perhaps something other than comedy amused him.

it reinforces the sad fact that most people aren't interesting

I think a lot of those commenters you’re referring to are like 12 years old; I wouldn’t base your concept of humanity around it.

Pagliacci? man I could not name a more suckass clown

xp I had an ex 10+ years ago say "They remind me of redneck boys from back home who just started using the internet" and ever since then I stopped being annoyed by it.

Watching Shining Girls on Apple TV now. It’s set in 90s Chicago, lots of hip musical posters and t-shirts—Jesus Lizard, Bikini Kill. Songs used on the show by Kleenex, Pylon, Orange Juice, Donnie & Jo Emerson, Pixies

wasn't there an episode of Better Call Saul where Kim Wexler is wearing headphones and they reveal that she is listening to Stereolab? I thought that was super cool

I don't mind the "x sent me here" thing at all because frequently enough x is something I've never heard of in my life and it's nice to know there's followings I'm totally unaware of hyping ppl to good songs.

Not sure what you all get out of reading Youtube comments, period

That's an awfully valid point.

tbh every once in a while I come across some good info in there not to be found anywhere else but in general of course you are correct.

This thread has caused me to go down a rabbit hole in my mind thinking about art and using music to enhance your own art and scores versus soundtracks blah blah blah I now I've come back on myself and decided not to go with any decision on this.

Not sure what you all get out of reading Youtube comments, period

Boomer reveries about perfect Summers with The One That Got Away on every 60's and 70's pop hit, fucking love those.

"And ever since that rainy afternoon in Brenda Wilmott's bedroom, I've never been able to listen to the Moody Blues' 'Timothy Leary Is Dead' the same way again."

I thought the use of Shellac's "The End of Radio" was awesome in that AP Bio episode. It was a funny episode anyway, but when I heard that kicking in, I about leaped out my chair dying that it was even there.

It was unexpected, to say the least.

The movie "Brick" (2005) ends with a big/audacious music cue that made me laugh in appreciation (as in, "I don't think any movie could pull this off, but I like that you went for it")

^^Cosign. Although it would have been more Punk Rock and fun if they'd used the Joy Division cover instead.