Hmm music related boredom time-filler… worth a go, I would say. Tagged are those I’m curious to hear from…
I’m extra bored though, so you’ll notice each scene has 3 songs. This is because I wanted to pretend to be scientific and ran the test 3 separate times start to finish to see if I got a similar set of answers each time… Like I said, I was bored. Anyone tagged can do it as few or as many times as you like…
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If your life was film what would the soundtrack be?
So, here’s how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…
7. When you’re finished tag some other people to do it!
Opening Credits:
a) Kosheen – Hide U
b) Announcement by George Wein (Ella Fitzgerald @ Newport Jazz Festival)
c) 433 er0s – Sudden Death
Waking Up:
a) Moby – Tomorrow Never Dies James Bond Theme
b) T. Rex – Zip Gun Boogie
c) System of a Down – Highway Song
First Day At School:
a) R.E.M. – Monty Got a Raw Deal
b) Blur – On the Way to the Club
c) The Lion King – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Falling In Love:
a) Lenny Kravitz – Straight Cold Prayer
b) Snoop Dogg – Murder Was the Case
c) The Corrs – Radio
Fight Song:
a) Bruce Springsteen – Sinaloa Cowboys
b) The Beatles – Something
c) Green Day – She’s a Rebel
Breaking Up:
a) Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire
b) Dire Straits – Your Latest Trick
c) Phil Collins – Both Sides of the Story
Prom:
a) The Mars Volta – This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed
b) The Ataris – Ray…
c) The Ataris – Song #13
Life:
a) Coal Chamber – Loco
b) Pendulum – Tarantula
c) Cypress Hill – A Man
Making Babies:
a) Damien Rice – I Remember
b) Bob Marley – Reaction
c) Stiff Little Fingers – Wait and See
Mental Breakdown:
a) Aretha Franklin – I Apologize
b) Bloodhound Gang – Asleep at the Wheel
c) Queens of the Stone Age – No One Knows
Driving:
a) Chumbawamba – Tubthumping
b) KoRn – Justin
c) David Bowie – Drive-In Saturday
Flashback:
a) Limp Bizkit – My Way
b) Johnny Cash – Luther Played the Boogie
c) Anti-Flag – I’m Being Watched by the CIA
Getting Back Together:
a) Woody Guthrie – We Shall Be Free
b) Simon & Garfunkel – Homeward Bound
c) Alisha’s Attic – Indestructible
Birth of a Child:
a) Placebo – This Picture
b) Mr. Scruff – Mushroom Jazz
c) Tears for Fears – Change
Final Battle:
a) Phön – Nix Ausser Asche
b) Stateside Hombres – Come Outa Here
c) Kittie – Wolves
Death Scene:
a) Arctic Monkeys – The View from the Afternoon
b) Golden Earring – Burning Stuntman
c) Jools Holland & His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra – Hop the Wag
Funeral Song:
a) [spunge] – Idols
b) Lenny Kravitz – Butterfly
c) Puddle of Mudd – Control
End Credits:
a) The Miles Davis Quintet – Blues by Five
b) The Blues Brothers – “B” Movie Box Car Blues
c) AC/DC – Kissin’ Dynamite
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So, what do I think? What do you think?
Looking at it all, I’m only going to comment on (a) as it seems to be the only one with a chance of actually working. The later tests just got more and more weird, with the occasional working track and the rest just plain random.
My view is that if the film was written around that soundtrack it would be extremely cool in a sort of random, funky-weird way. Whilst a lot of the songs could be appropriate for their ’sections’ if you take an extremely in-depth and abstract look at them (let’s face it, if you think long enough, any song could be argued for most roles) a lot of them would just force the scrip to be as weird as a writer could make it.
Examples of that include:
- Springsteen’s Sinaloa Cowboys as fight music – not a standard approach.
- Woody Guthrie’s We Shall Be Free as a getting back together song… interesting approach if it hadn’t been played in the film up to that point and therefore isn’t being used as a memory-jogger.
- Arctic Monkeys’ The View from the Afternoon just wouldn’t work for a death scene as far as I can work it out. It would be fun to see if it could, but I just can’t envision it. Maybe short, sharp, static shots of each step of the death could work, but it’s not easy to me, which is why I’m not in films, probably.
- Equally, Idols by [spunge] would make for a weird funeral tune, unless it was particularly upbeat and ‘out there’. Which could be fun.
- Closing with Blues by Five is nothing less than a stroke of genius by the random generator.
Looking across all three playlists there seem to be a couple of key areas that are always unexpected: Prom; Fight Song; Birth of a Child.
I can only presume these are for three reasons:
a) Prom: I’m not American
b) Fight Song: The thought of me fighting and surviving any length of time is simply absurd (and laughable)
c) Birth of a Child: Not likely
But maybe I’m thinking too hard about it.
In general I think it’s hard for Mental Breakdown not to work with nearly any tune, as it can be made random enough to fit, equally so for Flashback, depending on what it was a flashback of.
And there we have it. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Over to you good folks to fill your bored moments with music:
Mike, Diko, Rob, John, Duncan, Alex, Bear, Ste, Gash, and Bear-cub, the challenge is yours…
