Little C: Perfect Meeting of Music and Story
Readers, once again it's not Wednesday. My punishment word is rhythm, which considering is not that bad so I'm just going to run with it and not make a big deal out of this.
As regulars around here will know, we are not just TV and movie junkies. CT and I love music, and I wanted to talk today about the place where music and TV overlap. The moments when a scene bends it's rhythm to fit a song. The moments on some of my favorite shows that the music selection didn't just highlight a good tune or promote the latest radio hit, it lifted the moment to a deeper emotional place through the use of a well chosen soundtrack. For instance:
Buffy Becoming: Part 2- Sarah McLachlan "Full of Grace"
Before Sarah was making you sob into a pillow over the fate of abandoned animals, she was making nerds across the country fall apart over the fate of the doomed love between Buffy and Angel. This whole season was a run up to Joss Whedon punching us all in the emotions, but to top it all off with McLachlan emotionally weep/singing... It was brutal. It's the perfect example of a song fitting the needs of a scene, with a slow driving rhythm that pulls you into the world of pain that Buffy was living. Ugh, I'm tearing up just thinking about it. WHY COULDN'T THEY BE HAPPY, JOSS?
Supernatural Do You Believe In Miracles- Blind Faith "Can't Find My Way Home"
Season 2 of this show could have been the whole list. The musical choices were perfect, PERFECT, for an entire year. They had the boys running from the feds set to Renegade. Sam was forced to kill his girlfriend (she was a werewolf and she asked him to do it) set to Silent Lucidity. THEY DID A WHOLE EPISODE ON ROBERT JOHNSON! They picked a tone for the show and they nearly flawlessly executed music choices to fit it for the first few years. But past season 3 the music budget clearly got cut as the years went on and these days if they put music in it's something that's come out in the last two years. Except at the end of Season 9 when Mark Sheppard gives a truly stunning monologue to a mostly dead (but partly alive) Dean and they played Can't Find My Way Home by Blind Faith... The song has this weird rhythmic quality that Ginger Baker was so good at, and it takes a scene that could so easily play as melodramatic and forces it to stay grounded.
Hannibal Aperitif- Bach Goldberg Variations BMV 988 "Aria"
Man this show. Bryan singer liked to pair up scenes of viscous murders with scenes of Mads Mikkelsen cooking and make sure it was edited to perfectly fit the rhythm of a classical piece of music. And those of us watching with a mixture of shock and hunger could never quite figure out the magic trick of how he did it. Never was this more apparent than Hannibal's first episode. I've rewatched this a million times and it never gets less shocking or less beautiful. Well done Mr. Singer.
Justified Bulletville- Brad Paisley "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive"
Okay this one is cheating a bit because Darrell Scott wrote the song for the show. But screw the rules cuz it so perfectly encapsulates the hopeless fight that Raylan had for the shows entire run. And to have it start playing after a shootout scene where practically everyone died let you know that the fight might have ended but the war was still going.
Sons of Anarchy With An X- Noah Gundersen "Family"
We heart Noah Gundersen at our household. We've been to several concerts, and we force his music on everyone we can find. But the obsession started here. His song "Family" was used in a Sons of Anarchy episode in season 4 and it was just fit so damn well that looking it up became the first taste that got us all addicted to everything he puts out. The scene that uses the song involves a brick of cocaine stolen by one of my favorite characters and his attempt to cover it up. The whole episode deals with the struggles that come from having a broken system that you call your family and the destructive rhythms that it can have on your life. The first line comes in with "Say something awful as if fucking the world was your right-" and just like that the song and the show hit a perfect harmony.
Okay rant over for now, but I highly recommend going through some of your favorite episodes and paying special attention to the soundtracks.
Little C
As regulars around here will know, we are not just TV and movie junkies. CT and I love music, and I wanted to talk today about the place where music and TV overlap. The moments when a scene bends it's rhythm to fit a song. The moments on some of my favorite shows that the music selection didn't just highlight a good tune or promote the latest radio hit, it lifted the moment to a deeper emotional place through the use of a well chosen soundtrack. For instance:
Buffy Becoming: Part 2- Sarah McLachlan "Full of Grace"
Before Sarah was making you sob into a pillow over the fate of abandoned animals, she was making nerds across the country fall apart over the fate of the doomed love between Buffy and Angel. This whole season was a run up to Joss Whedon punching us all in the emotions, but to top it all off with McLachlan emotionally weep/singing... It was brutal. It's the perfect example of a song fitting the needs of a scene, with a slow driving rhythm that pulls you into the world of pain that Buffy was living. Ugh, I'm tearing up just thinking about it. WHY COULDN'T THEY BE HAPPY, JOSS?
Supernatural Do You Believe In Miracles- Blind Faith "Can't Find My Way Home"
Season 2 of this show could have been the whole list. The musical choices were perfect, PERFECT, for an entire year. They had the boys running from the feds set to Renegade. Sam was forced to kill his girlfriend (she was a werewolf and she asked him to do it) set to Silent Lucidity. THEY DID A WHOLE EPISODE ON ROBERT JOHNSON! They picked a tone for the show and they nearly flawlessly executed music choices to fit it for the first few years. But past season 3 the music budget clearly got cut as the years went on and these days if they put music in it's something that's come out in the last two years. Except at the end of Season 9 when Mark Sheppard gives a truly stunning monologue to a mostly dead (but partly alive) Dean and they played Can't Find My Way Home by Blind Faith... The song has this weird rhythmic quality that Ginger Baker was so good at, and it takes a scene that could so easily play as melodramatic and forces it to stay grounded.
Hannibal Aperitif- Bach Goldberg Variations BMV 988 "Aria"
Man this show. Bryan singer liked to pair up scenes of viscous murders with scenes of Mads Mikkelsen cooking and make sure it was edited to perfectly fit the rhythm of a classical piece of music. And those of us watching with a mixture of shock and hunger could never quite figure out the magic trick of how he did it. Never was this more apparent than Hannibal's first episode. I've rewatched this a million times and it never gets less shocking or less beautiful. Well done Mr. Singer.
Justified Bulletville- Brad Paisley "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive"
Okay this one is cheating a bit because Darrell Scott wrote the song for the show. But screw the rules cuz it so perfectly encapsulates the hopeless fight that Raylan had for the shows entire run. And to have it start playing after a shootout scene where practically everyone died let you know that the fight might have ended but the war was still going.
Sons of Anarchy With An X- Noah Gundersen "Family"
We heart Noah Gundersen at our household. We've been to several concerts, and we force his music on everyone we can find. But the obsession started here. His song "Family" was used in a Sons of Anarchy episode in season 4 and it was just fit so damn well that looking it up became the first taste that got us all addicted to everything he puts out. The scene that uses the song involves a brick of cocaine stolen by one of my favorite characters and his attempt to cover it up. The whole episode deals with the struggles that come from having a broken system that you call your family and the destructive rhythms that it can have on your life. The first line comes in with "Say something awful as if fucking the world was your right-" and just like that the song and the show hit a perfect harmony.
Okay rant over for now, but I highly recommend going through some of your favorite episodes and paying special attention to the soundtracks.
Little C
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