Photo illustration: Vulture; photos courtesy of HBO Max, Netflix and Disney+
it’s a vulture vacation Tradition. Once again, we’ve run through the past year’s best uses of existing pop music on the small and/or streaming screen. Revivals and remixes, throwbacks and callbacks, contemporary hits and decades-old classics — all of these can be successfully leveraged to advance a show’s dramatic or comedic goals, as this top 10 list demonstrates. rock.
Verve’s ’90s Britpop song “Lucky Man” replaces the question mark with an exclamation point, a fitting end to Dennis Lehane’s grueling true-crime drama. black bird Follow a preppy gunman turned undercover informant on a mission to unearth the truth about an incarcerated serial killer; Taron Egerton uses every instrument in his tool kit to play the informant, while Paul Walter Gasping and snickering, Paul Walter Hauser gained notoriety in his own way as the murderer in question. In the end, Egerton’s character learns enough from Hauser to secure his release from prison, but not before the horrific knowledge he acquires begins to eat away at his mind. Sure, he’s a lucky man, as he ends up flying out of prison – but can he escape the heinous crimes he uncovers? That’s the irony of this song choice, and what makes it so indelible.
“Look, Charlie Manson wrote some beautiful songs. Still, he’s Charlie Manson.” Controversial, Daniel Molloy! The conductor of the vampire drama’s titular interview, played by Eric Bogosian, has little patience with the vampire in question, Louis de Pointe Dulac, and has little patience for Louis’s psychotic, preteen-adolescent protege, Claudia, a teenage vampire, is even more impatient. Here’s how her Molloy compares to Manson, the cult leader who defined Death in the Age of Aquarius…I’m forever amazed that Manson scored the end of the episode. Molloy was right: Manson can be a talented songwriter in very limited doses, as his hilarious ode to personal freedom, “Home Is Your Happy Place,” demonstrates. It’s hard to hear that bliss when you reflect on Sharon Tate’s fate, which is why this song is a strong choice for the soundtrack to a show about magnetic massacres, even if they’re supernatural variants.
“We state it’s a raucous show, you’re either in or you’re out,” Bear Creator Christopher Storer talks about choosing to end the dirtbag-chef dramedy’s series premiere with “Animal,” a smashing track from Pearl Jam’s second album Compare. Make a statement, man. Recorded at the height of the band’s fame and success, it’s a song of us against the world, so frontman Eddie Vedder chants the phrase “five against one”: five band members, one planet of people who long for them . The track fits the chaotic, besieged energy of Kami, Richie et al in the kitchen. engage in their high-intensity trade. Keep watching this show, it says, and expect shit to get crazy.
“Home is where I want to be”? I will say so, Eric! In the third episode of the financial drama’s second season, the gang travels to Wales to hunt pheasants and engage in the usual maneuvers and backstabbing. Eric believes his protégé Harper is on his side and gives her a precious pen as a token of their alliance; Harper already knows how trustworthy Eric is and will sabotage him at every opportunity. When the episode ends, he’s stunned, with the soundtrack playing Talking Heads’ bittersweet ode to needing a place, a person, and a home; Eric now realizes he has neither.
When Sam Cooke’s playful, feisty version hits Sicily, we’re already in white lotusSeason 2: Beatrice Grannò’s aspiring musician Mia sang this song in a hotel bar a few episodes earlier. But as our very own Jen Chaney puts it, ending the season on such an incongruously cheerful note sends an ironic message that, at least for these insatiable bastards, the only thing they value more than Can be obtained through continuous manipulation. Still, is it possible to play Cooke’s version as Mia and BFF Lucía happily roam the streets of Sicily—Lucía successfully scamming wealthy American tryouts Albie and Dom, Mia out of her full-time hotel gig? Way by granting manager Valentina a sexy sexual awakening – isn’t it as cynical as it seems? Their relationship isn’t transactional in the least, and probably the only one in the entire show. Hey, I’m just trying to find a silver lining here!
“I’ll kill for you, Megan Thee Stallion!” A post-credits exchange that better encapsulates the tongue-in-cheek gender politics of Marvel’s funniest show to date. “Your stallion” Pete. Your impressions of Disney+’s slew of MCU material may vary, but it’s hard to argue against Jennifer’s hulking secret identity coddling with one of the greatest rappers of all time…and classically, no less! I mean, this scene takes place in the same world as Thanos’ snapshot.Now That is movie world
The peak or nadir of the true-crime drama boom depends on your perspective, with Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Dahmer He deliberately divides his time between notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s youth in the 1970s and his heyday as a serial killer in the early 1990s. The show’s repeated use of the late ballad “Please Don’t Go,” by funk-disco hits KC and Sunshine fits this duality.The original recording is this year’s sweet ’70s soft rock tune, expertly scored for several of this year’s true crime series, from candy arrive under heaven’s banner arrive family friend. But via KWS’s cover version—itself a knockoff that Double You attempted a few months earlier—the song was also a staple of dance club culture during that odd period of the early ’90s, when club music laced grunge and pop-supreme Gangsta rap, a period well represented by the hot dance to the soundtrack of Dahmer stalking other men in the Minneapolis gay scene. It’s a musical choice that’s as shrewd as it is frustrating.
I have nothing to say about singer and saxophonist Tim Cappello’s appearance in the season 2 finale book dog Our reviewer Jen Chaney hasn’t said it any better, so I didn’t bother trying.I will say that Cappello’s rendition of Call’s “I Still Believe” is already one of the most legendary needlepoints in film history, summing up director Joel Schumacher’s gothic flamboyant vampire work in 80’s glory lost boy On its sweat-soaked bare chest.See it again in Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi’s heartfelt drama – indeed, see Capello performed in person – is a pleasant reminiscence of that classic movie. In both film and television, it’s a paean to the outcasts, suggesting that while the good guys may or may not win in the end, it’s still something to look forward to.
Like so many of Netflix’s phenomenal cinematic touchstones, its auditory cues, making the emotional associations audiences have already built, do the lion’s share of getting the show over the finish line. But equally, I’m unlikely to complain about performing Metallica’s “Puppet Master” to outwit Upside Down’s ghouls—what am I, Metalhead Grinch? — I’m not going to complain about the teen horror blockbuster that helped put Kate Bush’s harrowing art-rock masterpiece “Running Up That Hill” on the charts decades after its release. You don’t need to follow redhead heroine Max’s battle with Swamp Thing’s lookalike Vecna to appreciate how the show deftly leverages its reach with a broad audience to help make one of the best songs of the ’80s an unlikely hit Become a pop culture fixture and hit the charts in 2022.
“When things fall apart, nobody cares much.” Pardon me for quoting a very different song, but that’s really the message of this song better call saul Harry Nilsson’s visceral, vulnerable anthem soundtracked by Dressage & Slow Shiver made for a beautiful, albeit temporary, love affair. In the case of Jimmy McGill, Kim Wexler and Mike Elmantraut, a perfect day would involve the first two going about their day-to-day affairs while the third works on remodeling their apartment, Namely, the location where friend and foe Howard Hamlin was murdered, bringing it back to what it was. homicide state. Mike, being Mike, succeeds, but the pressure on Jimmy and Kim proves to be too much. When Jimmy shed the last vestiges of his normal personhood, completing his metamorphosis into the sleazy lawyer Walter White later relied on to protect his meth empire from the authorities, Kim withdrew from Jimmy and the law entirely. It’s the emotional climax of the entire series, the retrospective, inescapable destination of a multi-year journey. This song makes it sing.
We skipped 2021, but for what it’s worth, no. 1 Originally “Excursions” from A Tribe Called Quest, from eleventh station.