The topic is songs that are used a bit too much as background music in movies, TV and commercials. My pics off the top of my head:
-Pretty much any Enya song
-100 Years by Five for Fighting, anytime you want to show the passing of years and that retirement fund vesting before your eyes
-And if I never see another Saab jet chasing a Saab car, a covert ops team running a mission or a gunbattle in a night club set to Paul Oakenfold’s Ready Steady Go, it will be too soon.
Had to ask: What was that Muzak like tune that appeared in intermissions and commercial parodies in Monty Pyton?
That tune was already being parodied there and I **still hear it ** in new commercials. :smack:
“O Fortuna” from Orff’s “Carmina Burana”. Not so much now as about three to five years ago.
I Feel Good
makes me feel bad when I hear it in a laxitive commercial.
“Battle without Honor” from Kill Bill is getting seriously overused, and it’s a cool song. I hear the main theme music from Requiem for a Dream, which was rescored and used in Lord of the Rings, in what feels like 50% of all movie trailers these days.
I knew that you would … get here to post that before me, that is.
Spring from the Four Seasons.
Canon in D (every ad for single funeral homes plays it).
Walking on Sunshine.
Things can only get better. The last two for “lifestyle” ads, meaning everything from Promensil to bananas to laxatives.
“Spirit in the Sky,” or “Green Onions,” or some variations of them. Every damn movie involving football seems to feature them.
Gorecki’s third symphony. It’s pretty much the stock ‘sad story’ background music for all mediocre documentary-makers.
Any scene portraying snobbish, rich people attending high-class social affairs will invariably be accompanied by Vivaldi’s “Spring” from the Four Seasons. If not that, then Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” can be expected.
I was also going to mention “I Feel Good.” Another top contender for music overuse is George Thoroughgood’s “Bad to the Bone.”
There is a programme on Australian TV called 20 to 1 which goes through 20 of some thing - stuffups, funny on air moments etc. Last week was One Hit Wonders and one was Spirit In The Sky. They mentioned that it has featured in 30 film soundtracks.
Beyond the Sea by Bobby Darin, for some cruise line. They’ve been playing it for a couple of years,now.
“I Can See Clearly Now”, by Johnny Nash. Any allergy, sinus, headache or whatever commercial thinks that this song will lead us to a bright sunshiny day, but really it just makes me turn the channel.
The “generic love scene music” where it keeps building to the violins’ long run up to the climax. . .
Yeah, but you’ve gotta admit, it worked in Terminator 2…
It was effective the first million times it was used, but the Also Sprach Zarathustra bit (aka 2001 theme) has worn way too thin.
Are you thinking of the theme from A Summer Place?
The love theme from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet?
Peter Gabriel - Salisbury Hill
It seems like half of all love story/family movies use this damn song. It has gotten better in recent years, but hell enough already.
Ah, yes…that’s it. Thank you. I couldn’t think of the name.
There’s also the typical “sunrise”/“early morning” music overplayed in cartoons (at least when I used to watch them).
And finally, around here (and perhaps most college towns), the college’s fight song is WAY, WAY overused as background music. I have, no joke, been watching TV and counted FOUR CONSECUTIVE (different) commercials that used it. Three consecutive happens once a week or so, and two consecutive is so common as to not be worth noting any more.