Right, this post is just a bit of a crabby moan really, but it's been plaguing my mind pretty much all year!
Inappropriate music. It's a real bug bear of mine, I just can't abide it.
You know how everyone has their own completely irrational thing that just turns them into a facist monster? Mine is inappropriate music - I cannot bear it. I'm really sensitive to music anyway, I've been known to walk out of a shop because they are playing bad music - not that I'm a snob, but I don't think it's unreasonable to not want to spend half an hour trying on clothes to the soundtrack of Mis-teeq telling me how to spell their name (incidentally, it's "M with the I with the S - T double E Q")
But this year has been particularly bad, to the point where I have found myself infuriated and offended, and that seems to have left some angry residue in my psyche. Am I overreacting? Perhaps. I'm not suggesting that these have done anything wrong per se but... Ah, who am I kidding? There is no excuse for using wrong music - and the people responsible should be shot. In the head. With a rusty spoon.
EXAMPLE 1
Volkswagen Car Advert - The Kinks: The Days
This one upset me to the point that every time it came on, I had to mute it, and stop myself from throwing my remote at my telly. Calm down, I would tell myself, it's not telly's fault. It's Western society's money grabbing manipulative sales-driven cynical corporate consumerism that is to blame. Throw the remote at that, not at lovely shiny telly.
The Kinks - Days. This song is an under rated classic, a thing of beauty and thus a joy forever - I have had this song down as the song I want played at my funeral, since I was 14.
(Yes, I was a morbid but well prepared 14 yr old. I recommend you all chose your funeral song and make it expressly known to all of your loved ones - otherwise I guarantee you will end up being buried to some Westlife song or Goodbye My Lover by James Blunt. Yeah - now you're seeing my point..)
Anyway, that one was blasphemy in my eyes - sentimental twaddle used to sell cars - breaks my heart.
EXAMPLE 2
Life on Mars - Title Sequence/Opening Credits Music
Now this one I just think lets itself down.
Life on Mars was a wonderful BBC series. Incredibly well written, acted and directed - a fascinating, clever in depth commentary on the human psyche via the moral dilemmas surrounding 'the force' (not that force, the other more truncheon-wieldy one) - it's an emotionally compelling, humorous, not-your-average cop drama, that keeps you guessing until the very end (what has happened to Sam, we wonder - accidental time travel, an alternate dimension, limbo, is he experiencing a complex neurological construct due to being in a coma? - fuck Lost, this is a proper journey of mystery, with a proper ending!) - then add the insurmountable Philip Glenister and the endlessly watchable John Simm into the equation, as two characters with a captivating dynamic, and there you have it - a real BBC gem.
A quick synopsis (no spoilers):
Sam Tyler is a detective in the modern day Manchester police department. Sam’s girlfriend is kidnapped by a serial killer he is hunting and, while trying to find her, Sam is struck by a car. Upon waking, he discovers he is in Manchester, 1973. Sam tries to discover whether he has actually traveled back in time, is in a coma imagining 1973, or if he has imagined 2006 and is actually crazy.
Now, as much as I rate this series, and I rate this series in a big way, I always truly hated the theme music. The first time I heard it, it grated instantly, and I still can't listen to it without scowling a little.
I get it - it's a difficult one, you can't have music with any of the trademarks of the modern era - neither can you go with 70s theme music, because either way you're letting slip the answer to the underlying secret of the show by synesthetically setting a decade theme in the collective subconscious of the viewers.
And yes, the makers/the beeb are far too smart to fall into the trap of making Bowie's Life on Mars the theme tune, thus negating the genius of the title, and the clever use of Bowie music in the show itself (either that or they couldn't afford the rights) - either way, I'm grateful.
However, did they really need to go with this nondescript mashup..?
To me, it sounds like it could easily be the theme tune to a crappy daytime Channel 5 hospital drama - and now we're here, I'm actually not too keen on the visuals either..
Disclaimer: I never watch Channel 5, so I am not referring to any existing Channel 5 programme. Any resemblance to any crap Channel 5 hospital drama, existing or in the works, is purely coincidental. And mathematically unavoidable.
I'm sorry, DCI Hunt and DI Tyler - I just feel it doesn't do you justice.
EXAMPLE 3
Twilight Breaking Dawn: Part 2 - Closing Credits - Bruno Mars
Right, where do I start with this one?
The inappropriate mis-use of this song is actually the perfect analogy for just how disappointing this movie was. This movie, by the way, not the franchise, just this appalling excuse for a movie. As a genuine Twilight fan (shut up) I think that this abomination of a film should be taken out the proverbial back door and shot. But not before it's been tortured for crimes against humanity. Ok, maybe not humanity, but the large chunk of humanity that genuinely rate these films/books, and have spent a lot of time defending them. Well well done for proving us wrong, in the most careless, cynical, blatantly just-for-profit way possible. Next time just punch me in the face and take £8 from my wallet. It would be better spent.
Not only was this poorly written, lazily put together, with no thought for momentum or scene transition or basic storytelling, lacking any attention or care - it also had, it would appear, replaced its' music department with a box of Pop Tarts.
The first film in the 'saga' won my heart with a brilliantly light sequence of a vampire baseball game set against Muse's Supermassive Black Hole (which in principle is something that should upset me, as a Muse fan, so big win there!) - and the atmospheric use of rock music in general was nice. A little cliched, but well thought out and earnest in its' careful song choices. Whereas this last monstrosity of a film lost my heart long before I'd heard this Bruno Mars song lazily chucked in at the credits, this just acted as a kick in the teeth. It basically said to me - ha! This'll teach you to sit through such a shoddy film - you should have walked out during the Wolf scene, which was clearly directed by the team behind Sesame Street. Except without the sense of humour.
Oh, and don't think that we didn't notice you using R-Pats' song from the first film. Oh, we all noticed. We are just saving our vitriol and fan-fury for something much more important: stopping this from ever being made (more to come on this subject, but thought I'd slip it in to prepare you, dear reader).
Side note: I like Bruno Mars, actually. 'Marry You' genuinely makes me want to get married in Vegas on a whim with a boy I'll never see again. It doesn't stop this song from being an insultingly bad choice.
EXAMPLE 4
Coca Cola Christmas advert - Natasha Bedingfield..!
I am a full on Christmas convert. I never cared for it much as a kid; every year I was shipped out like a wartime evacuee from the City to the countryside to spend Christmas with some family friends who were nice people, but extremely large - numbers wise - and extremely well-off. This meant that I spent my Christmases surrounded by luxury, mountains of presents, plentiful food, hustle and bustle - but me being a quiet, insular child with my headphones on and my shy little head in a book, I spent the entire time feeling uncomfortable and small, and insignificant, and different, and poor. Little did I know how familiar that feeling would become when entering secondary school..
Anyway, when I hit my 20s, Christmas had done a full circle and suddenly became something that I had control over: who I spent it with, where I spent it, who I bought presents for, how much egg nog I was going to swig - honestly, I must have already hit 20 or 21 when it dawned on me that I was no longer tied in to my mothers' Christmas regime of upper class suburban torture, I could have my own - so I did. I had several in fact, my first of my Christmases I spent on my own, in my flat, with my cat, having spent all of December making lists of the food I was going to eat, the films I was going to watch, the drinks I was going to make etc etc - I absolutely loved it. Liberation.
I spent subsequent Christmases at various places - with various friends who also had no family to return to, 'London's orphans' I called us. One year I spent in a huge 5 bedroom in Dalston where my friend and I drank his housemate's 100 yr old bourbon and played cards til the wee hours, another I spent with two Filipino guys who gave me shells to wear in my hair and whom I taught to make Yorkshire Puddings, another I spent with my best friend's family who played charades like an Olympic sport while I stuffed my face with lemon cake.
Each one was lovely in its' own unique way, but the Christmas that most feels like mine are the ones I spend with my urban family at Pickled Lily's house. We've had three Christmases together, all 4 of us, and I hold them dearly to my heart. We do all the traditional things - tree decorated with love and lights, big christmas lunch with all the trimmings, crackers and mince pies, presents on christmas day morning, Bucks Fizz and egg nog, eat Quality Streets and watch the Doctor Who special, play board games on Boxing Day - and all of this we do whilst having a laugh and chilling out, without all the drama of a family Christmas (you know; the politics and dramas and fights and underlying repressed British tension and resentment - one friend of mine texted me from A&E this year whilst her grandad was having a panic attack, her mum was getting hammered and throwing up on an orderly, and her 30 yr old step sister was chucking all her presents in the bin..)
You know, being able to choose my own Christmas may be one of my favourite things about becoming a grownup. Really.
But, I digress - my point being that one of the most magical feelings is when you first realise that Christmas is coming. I mean genuinely - when Summer is over and you get depressed as Winter looms ahead - September is spent watching the leaves change and rueing the loss of Summer, October gets cold and Halloween comes and goes without making much noise, November brings with it two things: rain, and the promise of Christmas ahead. So come November, you know that it's coming, you tell yourself to make preparation and start thinking about presents (so that you don't find yourself desperately jumping off a night bus on Christmas eve and sheepishly giving your loved ones scratchcards and fags from the corner shop) - however, you only start to feel it approaching when a few things happen. One of those things is the Coca Cola advert.
Holidays are coming, holidays are coming, holidays are coming..
Ahhh it's so naff, and so American and earnest - but it's that very thing that turns you into a little kid - the animation, the jingly jangly bells, the snow, the commercial version of white-bearded Santa popping up on your screens swigging a diet coke and winking at you - ahhh, nothing quite says Christmas like it.
Seriously.
And every year, my Facebook gets inundated with status updates (including my own) excitedly proclaiming that Christmas has officially started - the Coca Cola advert has been on!
However, this year... This year, luckily I didn't catch the advert until just before I left for Christmas week - but when I saw it was on, I dropped everything, turned the volume up, and sat excitedly in front of the telly like a child or a happy dog, expecting some lovely sappy sentimental nonsense that melts the ice over my cynical heart, and of course some reindeer and snow and jingly bells, but what I got was this..
What.. the.. fuck.. is Natasha Bedingfield.. doing on the Christmas advert..?
A brief, incoherent scene based on some half-arsed premise of Santa holding a snow globe with 'the world' in it - and to top it all off, the irritating self satisfied snotty private school pretending to be 'ghetto' voice of Natasha horse-mouth Bedingfield. I could have handled the stupid visuals if there was only a good song going on!
I'm sorry. I will compose myself. I am aware I've now regressed into an illiterate teenager (cf: 'horse-mouth') - but I just watched all of the above to check video quality, and it's taken its' toll on my mental health and sanity.
So, I will leave you with this: music is a tool to be used very carefully, and with great respect and reverence and, if possible, love - when combining it with any form of media, it can transform a simple scene, advert, visual, picture - into something magical, or something aesthetically insulting, and in severe cases, blasphemous. (I'm still not over reacting, I swear)
This is my last blog post of 2011, and funnily enough, rather than go out on that note - I will go out on a slightly more optimistic note in regards to the use of music in the media, from an unlikely source. The London fireworks, which are more often than not, a complete waste of time, money and neck movement - this year, were spectacular. I was genuinely speechless. And a big part of that was due to the fantastic use of soundtrack - hopefully this is a good sign for 2012 - bring it on!
Inappropriate music. It's a real bug bear of mine, I just can't abide it.
You know how everyone has their own completely irrational thing that just turns them into a facist monster? Mine is inappropriate music - I cannot bear it. I'm really sensitive to music anyway, I've been known to walk out of a shop because they are playing bad music - not that I'm a snob, but I don't think it's unreasonable to not want to spend half an hour trying on clothes to the soundtrack of Mis-teeq telling me how to spell their name (incidentally, it's "M with the I with the S - T double E Q")
But this year has been particularly bad, to the point where I have found myself infuriated and offended, and that seems to have left some angry residue in my psyche. Am I overreacting? Perhaps. I'm not suggesting that these have done anything wrong per se but... Ah, who am I kidding? There is no excuse for using wrong music - and the people responsible should be shot. In the head. With a rusty spoon.
EXAMPLE 1
Volkswagen Car Advert - The Kinks: The Days
This one upset me to the point that every time it came on, I had to mute it, and stop myself from throwing my remote at my telly. Calm down, I would tell myself, it's not telly's fault. It's Western society's money grabbing manipulative sales-driven cynical corporate consumerism that is to blame. Throw the remote at that, not at lovely shiny telly.
The Kinks - Days. This song is an under rated classic, a thing of beauty and thus a joy forever - I have had this song down as the song I want played at my funeral, since I was 14.
(Yes, I was a morbid but well prepared 14 yr old. I recommend you all chose your funeral song and make it expressly known to all of your loved ones - otherwise I guarantee you will end up being buried to some Westlife song or Goodbye My Lover by James Blunt. Yeah - now you're seeing my point..)
Anyway, that one was blasphemy in my eyes - sentimental twaddle used to sell cars - breaks my heart.
EXAMPLE 2
Life on Mars - Title Sequence/Opening Credits Music
Now this one I just think lets itself down.
Life on Mars was a wonderful BBC series. Incredibly well written, acted and directed - a fascinating, clever in depth commentary on the human psyche via the moral dilemmas surrounding 'the force' (not that force, the other more truncheon-wieldy one) - it's an emotionally compelling, humorous, not-your-average cop drama, that keeps you guessing until the very end (what has happened to Sam, we wonder - accidental time travel, an alternate dimension, limbo, is he experiencing a complex neurological construct due to being in a coma? - fuck Lost, this is a proper journey of mystery, with a proper ending!) - then add the insurmountable Philip Glenister and the endlessly watchable John Simm into the equation, as two characters with a captivating dynamic, and there you have it - a real BBC gem.
A quick synopsis (no spoilers):
Sam Tyler is a detective in the modern day Manchester police department. Sam’s girlfriend is kidnapped by a serial killer he is hunting and, while trying to find her, Sam is struck by a car. Upon waking, he discovers he is in Manchester, 1973. Sam tries to discover whether he has actually traveled back in time, is in a coma imagining 1973, or if he has imagined 2006 and is actually crazy.
Now, as much as I rate this series, and I rate this series in a big way, I always truly hated the theme music. The first time I heard it, it grated instantly, and I still can't listen to it without scowling a little.
I get it - it's a difficult one, you can't have music with any of the trademarks of the modern era - neither can you go with 70s theme music, because either way you're letting slip the answer to the underlying secret of the show by synesthetically setting a decade theme in the collective subconscious of the viewers.
And yes, the makers/the beeb are far too smart to fall into the trap of making Bowie's Life on Mars the theme tune, thus negating the genius of the title, and the clever use of Bowie music in the show itself (either that or they couldn't afford the rights) - either way, I'm grateful.
However, did they really need to go with this nondescript mashup..?
To me, it sounds like it could easily be the theme tune to a crappy daytime Channel 5 hospital drama - and now we're here, I'm actually not too keen on the visuals either..
Disclaimer: I never watch Channel 5, so I am not referring to any existing Channel 5 programme. Any resemblance to any crap Channel 5 hospital drama, existing or in the works, is purely coincidental. And mathematically unavoidable.
I'm sorry, DCI Hunt and DI Tyler - I just feel it doesn't do you justice.
EXAMPLE 3
Twilight Breaking Dawn: Part 2 - Closing Credits - Bruno Mars
Right, where do I start with this one?
The inappropriate mis-use of this song is actually the perfect analogy for just how disappointing this movie was. This movie, by the way, not the franchise, just this appalling excuse for a movie. As a genuine Twilight fan (shut up) I think that this abomination of a film should be taken out the proverbial back door and shot. But not before it's been tortured for crimes against humanity. Ok, maybe not humanity, but the large chunk of humanity that genuinely rate these films/books, and have spent a lot of time defending them. Well well done for proving us wrong, in the most careless, cynical, blatantly just-for-profit way possible. Next time just punch me in the face and take £8 from my wallet. It would be better spent.
Not only was this poorly written, lazily put together, with no thought for momentum or scene transition or basic storytelling, lacking any attention or care - it also had, it would appear, replaced its' music department with a box of Pop Tarts.
The first film in the 'saga' won my heart with a brilliantly light sequence of a vampire baseball game set against Muse's Supermassive Black Hole (which in principle is something that should upset me, as a Muse fan, so big win there!) - and the atmospheric use of rock music in general was nice. A little cliched, but well thought out and earnest in its' careful song choices. Whereas this last monstrosity of a film lost my heart long before I'd heard this Bruno Mars song lazily chucked in at the credits, this just acted as a kick in the teeth. It basically said to me - ha! This'll teach you to sit through such a shoddy film - you should have walked out during the Wolf scene, which was clearly directed by the team behind Sesame Street. Except without the sense of humour.
Oh, and don't think that we didn't notice you using R-Pats' song from the first film. Oh, we all noticed. We are just saving our vitriol and fan-fury for something much more important: stopping this from ever being made (more to come on this subject, but thought I'd slip it in to prepare you, dear reader).
Side note: I like Bruno Mars, actually. 'Marry You' genuinely makes me want to get married in Vegas on a whim with a boy I'll never see again. It doesn't stop this song from being an insultingly bad choice.
EXAMPLE 4
Coca Cola Christmas advert - Natasha Bedingfield..!
I am a full on Christmas convert. I never cared for it much as a kid; every year I was shipped out like a wartime evacuee from the City to the countryside to spend Christmas with some family friends who were nice people, but extremely large - numbers wise - and extremely well-off. This meant that I spent my Christmases surrounded by luxury, mountains of presents, plentiful food, hustle and bustle - but me being a quiet, insular child with my headphones on and my shy little head in a book, I spent the entire time feeling uncomfortable and small, and insignificant, and different, and poor. Little did I know how familiar that feeling would become when entering secondary school..
Anyway, when I hit my 20s, Christmas had done a full circle and suddenly became something that I had control over: who I spent it with, where I spent it, who I bought presents for, how much egg nog I was going to swig - honestly, I must have already hit 20 or 21 when it dawned on me that I was no longer tied in to my mothers' Christmas regime of upper class suburban torture, I could have my own - so I did. I had several in fact, my first of my Christmases I spent on my own, in my flat, with my cat, having spent all of December making lists of the food I was going to eat, the films I was going to watch, the drinks I was going to make etc etc - I absolutely loved it. Liberation.
I spent subsequent Christmases at various places - with various friends who also had no family to return to, 'London's orphans' I called us. One year I spent in a huge 5 bedroom in Dalston where my friend and I drank his housemate's 100 yr old bourbon and played cards til the wee hours, another I spent with two Filipino guys who gave me shells to wear in my hair and whom I taught to make Yorkshire Puddings, another I spent with my best friend's family who played charades like an Olympic sport while I stuffed my face with lemon cake.
Each one was lovely in its' own unique way, but the Christmas that most feels like mine are the ones I spend with my urban family at Pickled Lily's house. We've had three Christmases together, all 4 of us, and I hold them dearly to my heart. We do all the traditional things - tree decorated with love and lights, big christmas lunch with all the trimmings, crackers and mince pies, presents on christmas day morning, Bucks Fizz and egg nog, eat Quality Streets and watch the Doctor Who special, play board games on Boxing Day - and all of this we do whilst having a laugh and chilling out, without all the drama of a family Christmas (you know; the politics and dramas and fights and underlying repressed British tension and resentment - one friend of mine texted me from A&E this year whilst her grandad was having a panic attack, her mum was getting hammered and throwing up on an orderly, and her 30 yr old step sister was chucking all her presents in the bin..)
You know, being able to choose my own Christmas may be one of my favourite things about becoming a grownup. Really.
But, I digress - my point being that one of the most magical feelings is when you first realise that Christmas is coming. I mean genuinely - when Summer is over and you get depressed as Winter looms ahead - September is spent watching the leaves change and rueing the loss of Summer, October gets cold and Halloween comes and goes without making much noise, November brings with it two things: rain, and the promise of Christmas ahead. So come November, you know that it's coming, you tell yourself to make preparation and start thinking about presents (so that you don't find yourself desperately jumping off a night bus on Christmas eve and sheepishly giving your loved ones scratchcards and fags from the corner shop) - however, you only start to feel it approaching when a few things happen. One of those things is the Coca Cola advert.
Holidays are coming, holidays are coming, holidays are coming..
Ahhh it's so naff, and so American and earnest - but it's that very thing that turns you into a little kid - the animation, the jingly jangly bells, the snow, the commercial version of white-bearded Santa popping up on your screens swigging a diet coke and winking at you - ahhh, nothing quite says Christmas like it.
Seriously.
And every year, my Facebook gets inundated with status updates (including my own) excitedly proclaiming that Christmas has officially started - the Coca Cola advert has been on!
However, this year... This year, luckily I didn't catch the advert until just before I left for Christmas week - but when I saw it was on, I dropped everything, turned the volume up, and sat excitedly in front of the telly like a child or a happy dog, expecting some lovely sappy sentimental nonsense that melts the ice over my cynical heart, and of course some reindeer and snow and jingly bells, but what I got was this..
What.. the.. fuck.. is Natasha Bedingfield.. doing on the Christmas advert..?
A brief, incoherent scene based on some half-arsed premise of Santa holding a snow globe with 'the world' in it - and to top it all off, the irritating self satisfied snotty private school pretending to be 'ghetto' voice of Natasha horse-mouth Bedingfield. I could have handled the stupid visuals if there was only a good song going on!
I'm sorry. I will compose myself. I am aware I've now regressed into an illiterate teenager (cf: 'horse-mouth') - but I just watched all of the above to check video quality, and it's taken its' toll on my mental health and sanity.
So, I will leave you with this: music is a tool to be used very carefully, and with great respect and reverence and, if possible, love - when combining it with any form of media, it can transform a simple scene, advert, visual, picture - into something magical, or something aesthetically insulting, and in severe cases, blasphemous. (I'm still not over reacting, I swear)
This is my last blog post of 2011, and funnily enough, rather than go out on that note - I will go out on a slightly more optimistic note in regards to the use of music in the media, from an unlikely source. The London fireworks, which are more often than not, a complete waste of time, money and neck movement - this year, were spectacular. I was genuinely speechless. And a big part of that was due to the fantastic use of soundtrack - hopefully this is a good sign for 2012 - bring it on!
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