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

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

A+ mashup potential right there

Jukebox soundtrack >>>> bombastic Hans Zimmer-y scoring IMO

I'm not making fun, but would some of you say that a feature of hearing a familiar song in a movie is a vicarious enjoyment through the ears of a theoretical novice, who doesn't know the song?

I'm not making fun, but would some of you say that a feature of hearing a familiar song in a movie is a vicarious enjoyment through the ears of a theoretical novice, who doesn't know the song?
― Halfway there but for you, Thursday, June 16, 2022 4:53 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think that is part of it. When you know the song, it seems that the movie is sneakily introducing it to a new audience by putting it in the background, and that's a positive. As opposed to a blunt introduction with no context, where the probability of rejection from the novice appears greater. At least often when I play something to someone, a strange vibe of expectation and uncertainty comes in and I myself begin to hear the song differently by imagining how it sounds to the other person, with the fear that the person will not like it, and sometimes it's like a self-realizing prophecy. With a film it's not like that, maybe just the risk that the person will not notice the song, but there's something cool in bringing the music.

I'd be more gung ho about scores vs jukebox if there was more creativity in the scoring world these days. As it is I'll take some cool needledrops over Hans Zimmer or yet another mediocre synthwave soundbed.

The uses of "Hallelujah" are an example where it IS annoying but that's because they're mostly totally deaf to what the song's actually about, and not in a poignant ironic way either, but I guess the Buckley cover did the damage on that one really.

"Hallelujah (The Shrek Song)"

Lol yeah, it's like nobody remembers the "remember when I moved on you" verse

"Hallelujah (The Inspirational 9/11 montage song)"

Just saw a trailer for a new doc all about that song.

Remember when Shrek moved on you
And holy donkey was moving too

shrek is terrible and john cale is a gem, but honestly it's john cale i blame for ruining "hallelujah"

Supersonic Rocket Ship is not a relatively unknown Kinks song that deserves to be one of their most played

Well you play your Buckley, Rufus too
you play that guy from the VU
But you don't really like the original, do you?

i don't want to imagine Shrek fucking me thanks

Probably the biggest difference between you and the younger generation tbh

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.

― pplains, Wednesday, June 15, 2022 10:15 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

they're also both perfect theme songs for their respective shows

Sure, but I wish I didn't see that Jackass intro in my head whenever I listen to Double Nickels.

A want tae fuck ye like an animal

xxpost

The pov that Leonard Cohen songs are better when performed by Leonard Cohen is not one I will ever fully understand.

Dunno that I'd make this a general rule, just think that in this case the soulful, reverential take that Buckley and most after him took is grotesquely ill-suited to the song.

Not sure I see why Cohen's delivery and Casio presets suit it better.

I never actually listened to the words to this song so not quite sure what it's about, just guessing based on the authorship.

gunslinging

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; I'm not even sure it's not what Cohen is going for in his chorus. Reading it as just about sex doesn't seem more correct to me than reading it as just religious (and those drum sounds are the least sexy sound I can imagine anyway).xp

I think the focus on "sex" was more Cale/Buckley's thing, though it is of course definitely a part of it.

that's why so many people masturbate at funerals when it's played

I keep wanting to say something about the actual thread topic but I'm having trouble forming an opinion, which I think means it doesn't bother me.

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.