What television producers think of your favourite music

When I’m not writing my award winning* blog for TheVine I spend my time as a video editor and producer. Part of my job is searching for music that is just right for the video I am working on. The briefs I follow demand songs that are “edgy but corporate” or “uplifting but tear-jerking” or some other such nonsense that means exactly nothing and everything all at once. The best way to please a client is to spend hours searching for the right track, and then stack up about 8 alternative tracks to use when they don’t like the first track (and then prepare to take a deep breath and bin them all when the client decides they prefer the first one after all).

Television producers seem to have very specific ideas about what music works on television and what doesn’t and they like to use popular songs in the hope that they will generate an emotional reaction. They want their insurance ad or reality television montage to remind you of your first love or of summertime.

If you’ve ever felt the pain of having your favourite indie hit sold out and used in a car commercial you’re only beginning to understand the strict and unimaginative world of production music for television. It’s an important thing to know about, because television producers are on a fervent mission to find and destroy every pop song you love. A few decisions television producers have made about your favourite music include:

Massive Attack's ‘Teardrop’- “Use this for stories about children’s hospitals and drought.”

Foo Fighters: “young people are still into this.”

Coldplay: “Beautiful! Perfect! I love it! Everyone will love it! Even Grandma’s will love it! It’s happy and sad all at once! It’s my one stop shop for all my atmospheric needs! Use this on every possible ad, credit sequence, current affairs story, reality television montage, and drama series! Use it over and over and over again!”  

Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’: “Oooh, it’s very moody isn’t it, I like the piano. Piano’s are good for love scenes aren’t they? Let’s put this in a love scene, or a scene with a mother reuniting with her children. Maybe remove the lyrical references to sex and violence but other then that we’re good to go. Can we make it sound more like Coldplay?”

Sigur Ros: “This can be used over helicopter shots of the ocean on nature documentaries, or close ups of insects.”

Gorillaz: “This will work perfectly for my middle of the range car commercial. Also- still relevant to young people”.

There are a few saving graces from this ritual slaughter of pop songs. Many production music sites, which provide thousands of tunes for every possible project under the RGB rainbow, provide music designed to sound almost exactly like your favourite bands. It’s cheaper for the television people, and prevents that horrible shudder you get when you know your favourite band has “sold out”. 

TVTropes call these songs the ‘Jimmy Hart Version’. They are just different enough from the songs you know and love that they avoid getting anyone sued for intellectual property. You may have noticed tracks like this on television, in programs and ads. You recognise the track, start to tapping your toes, only get to the chorus and find it slightly altered. It’s like walking into your lounge room after it’s been rearranged. Everything is familiar but it doesn’t quite feel right.

If you ever want to become thoroughly disenchanted with the entertainment industry spend an afternoon trawling through these Jimmy Hart Versions in a production music library. After listening to the copycat tracks a person begins to realise how cold and calculated the entertainment industry really is. The glamorous rock and roll lifestyle of many professional musicians really entails making something that sounds “like Queens of the Stone Age, but more corporate and a bit boppier, and exactly 3:09 minutes long, and not too many drums, we need to use this under dialogue”. And it isn't just no-name hacks making this music either. Extrememusic.com features tracks made by Snoop Dog and George Martin, to name just two.

Of course you can avoid the heartache of having music ruined for you forever by doing one of a few things:

1. Listen exclusively to Czech folk music or something else unlikely to be picked up for the newest Holden Cruze ad.

2. Just accept that pop songs aren’t the intensely personal and meaningful pieces of your soul you once thought they were and that some corporate fatcat on a yacht on the harbour is listening to the same Florence and the Machine song that you are, having the same emotional reaction, and ultimately planning how to make money off it.

3. Don’t watch television, ever.

4. Become deaf.

Best of luck to you.



*My blog went down the local RSL the other night and won a meat tray. True.