Background Music

Grey's Anatomy is sorta famous for this music thing (warning: iTunes link here) where they set everything to hipster music. Now, I'm a big fan of hipster music. And anything that brings Jem and Nellie McKay to the masses can't be all bad.

But my concern is that there's a music director on set whose job it is to "pump up the emotion". And in the case of GA, it's almost like they're substituting the actual craft of television with songs that completely overpower whatever's going on on-screen. At no point should I ever think "The music's better than the action, so I'll just listen to it and catch up on the story later". But the music is so much better than the actual faux-emoting going on, that's what happens.

Only one show I know of has really pulled off the "let's bring in music to support the story!" goal: Homicide. Obviously, I'm a huge HLOTS fan, so I could be biased, but that's the only show I remember where I thought "what was that, and where can I get it?" And this was back in the 90's when Napster was cool. Even after I found a list of all the songs, I could only get 30% of what was there. It wasn't hipster, it was rarely pop, it was always perfectly tuned to the scene. It actually helped move the show along, not wrap it up and beat you over the head with the message you were supposed to get.

Will we ever see another show that employs music as a tool instead of a bludgeon? Likely no. But it makes me appreciate HLOTS all the much more.