Record Collecting for Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time

by Courtney E. Smith

  Music supervisors select music for placement in films, commercials, and TV shows. Charged with the task of finding songs that feel like the moment they are being used to score, they present multiple options to the director and clear the selected tracks with artists, labels, and publishers. It was a position that was unheard of circa Valley Girl and had only just become indispensable around the time of Romeo + Juliet. So while Martha Coolidge just asked friends and local L.A. acts for permission to use their songs for Valley Girl, directors today employ music supervisors to handle all the licensing work, sifting through the hundreds of music submissions they get each day.

  For the studio, a movie soundtrack can be a revenue loss leader used to promote a movie, so they make an effort to keep licensing costs down. Because it's less expensive to license artists signed to the label that's releasing the soundtrack, the song selection for the first Twilight movie was tied heavily to Atlantic Records' roster, which resulted in some bizarre choices. The soundtrack features vaguely ill-fitting artists like Paramore, whose screaming-girl-anthem sound is the antithesis of Twilight's hero, Bella, whose character is more of a mousy everygirl. Also included were the past-their-prime Linkin Park. I can only assume '90s throwback Collective Soul, the band we'd all prefer to forget, also appeared because of their affiliation with Atlantic. The high point of the film musically was the inclusion of Radiohead's song "15 Steps" during the closing credits (an interesting touch of synchronicity with Romeo + Juliet), but this song wasn't included on the soundtrack. Everyone was taken by surprise when the soundtrack debuted at number one and went on to sell over two million copies.

  Due in part to the massive sales success of the Twilight album, there was a bigger budget for New Moon, and new director Chris Weitz brought a very different musical aesthetic to the film. He was the creative input behind the film adaption of Nick Hornby's About a Boy, which was set to a score entirely by Badly Drawn Boy. The feel of the music in New Moon led to numerous comparisons to subversive soundtracks from blockbuster movies of the '90s, like Romeo + Juliet and The Crow. Again, Thom Yorke was on board, lending a solo song, "Hearing Damage." Clearly he's the guy to call when a modern-day retelling of Romeo and Juliet needs music.

  The result is a soundtrack of dark songs that convey a sense of yearning true to the original tale of Romeo and Juliet, but that's where the similarities stop. In New Moon, Bella and Edward spend some time apart after his family nearly kills her. While apart, she considers falling in love with a werewolf but changes her mind (understandably). The plot may be convoluted, but the conflict is not: they are not together and they want to be. Much of the soundtrack is music you might listen to while lying in bed alone, not because you're out of love, but because there is a great distance between you and your love. It is music for the lonely, and like everything in Twilight, it's rife with longing but gives no relief. To be honest, I'm a huge fan of setting a mood and slowing down. I hate overexcited make-out sessions that turn into something else entirely in less than ten minutes. This soundtrack does a great job of setting the tone for a yearning round of kisses after you've been apart from your love.

  1. GRIZZLY BEAR WITH VICTORIA LEGRAND, "Slow Life"

  There was a lot of speculation about how all these indie bands ended up on the New Moon soundtrack, and Grizzly Bear became inadvertent spokespeople for the credible artists who contributed their songs to a vaguely bizarre teen vampire story. In an interview with Pitchfork, singer Chris Taylor fielded the question of how they got involved, and he responded, "Initially, it was like, ‘What?!' But Thom Yorke did it, and we like him. It's like: ‘If Dad does it, it's okay, right?'"

  Grizzly Bear recorded this new song for the film with Beach House singer Victoria Legrand. The Brooklyn band is known for their harmonizing, which is front and center on the track. This song is a slow buildup of sexy with no release, making it so very PG-13-make-out. The lyrics are almost unbearably romantic. It's not actually a song, but the embodiment of a swoon.

  2. LYKKE LI, "Possibility"

  When presented with the opportunity to sing about love, Lykke Li is likely to come at it from the oddest angle. She's the Woody Allen of attractive Scandinavian pop singers, obsessed with death and rejection. In this song she takes the concept of possibility, which for many people is positive and hopeful, and turns it into a theme about dying because your lover leaves you. It's practically a requiem, except for the percussion, which leads your mind to the little spots of sunshine on the outside of the possibility, sunshine that gives someone who's lost all hope a little spark of longing to keep them going. The track moves so slowly you might find yourself staring in someone's eyes for the duration.

  Some people might think underground or indie rock artists letting their music be used on soundtracks to blockbusters like New Moon is a big sell-out move. I think it's a helpful lift to the music taste of future generations. Like giving kids a little bit of fiber with their hefty dose of sugar. Lykke Li agrees with me about this whole indie-rock soundtrack thing. In an October 2009 interview with MTV, she says, "We've been feeding people such shit. Why can't we feed them good things ... because I know Robert Pattinson is this big teen idol, but I remember watching Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio, and I was, like, in love ... and the soundtrack to that movie is so good, you know? Really well-chosen songs. Not commercial. I think it's great, and hopefully we can do that again."

  3. BON IVER & ST. VINCENT, "Rosyln"

  Have you gotten the point by now that everyone was shocked by how indie-centric the New Moon soundtrack was? As though it should be all Rihanna and Taylor Swift because it's a juggernaut series for teenagers. Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, weighed in with some revelations in an interview with Pitchfork: "We were basically all suburban tweenagers at a point. I know for damn sure I was. I think if I had this soundtrack ... I probably would've been a little further along and probably better off." I think we can all agree with Clark here that to some extent New Moon is saving teenagers from worse music, one soundtrack at a time.

  This song, like most of Bon Iver's work, is ethereal, haunting, and deeply romantic. It captures that feeling of waltzing through a dark room, sneaking closer and closer to your dance partner. Clark sums it up perfectly to Pitchfork: "I'm singing along with Justin [Vernon of Bon Iver], and ... our voices combined create this kind of strange, androgynous—it kind of like, coalesces into one voice, and you're going like, ‘Oh, what is that? Who is that?'" It is ideal music for melding into someone.

  4. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, "Meet Me on the Equinox"

  Ah, New Moon's romantic lead single, from the band who once wrote a lovely ballad called "The Face That Launched 1,000 Shits" in homage to a woman. The restyling of Death Cab as romantic heroes has been slowly evolving over the last decade. The old-school version of Death Cab, from 1998 to 2002, was a band on the verge of joining the ranks of the emo, when it was still cool, alongside Jimmy Eat World and the first two Weezer records. They wrote oodles of songs about hating ex-girlfriends, hating Los Angeles, and hating girls who would never become their girlfriends and probably lived in Los Angeles. It was a little hard for any woman to relate to, let alone make out to. Then, somewhere around the Transatlanticism album, love came to town, and their music became infused with a romantic edge. Now they specialize in complex, symbolic love songs rife with aching, like "Meet Me on the Equinox." Just the same, this is a love song that could translate quickly into a breakup song, with a chorus that reminds you the end is always nigh.

  MAKING OUT WITH ROMEO AND JULIET PLAYLIST

  THE PLIMSOULS, "A Million Miles Away"

  THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS, "Love My Way"

  JOSIE COTTON, "Johnny, Are You Queer?"

  MODERN ENGLISH, "I Melt with You"

  DES'REE, "Kissing You"

  GAVIN FRIDAY, "Angel"

  GARBAGE, "#1 Crush"

  RADIOHEAD, "Exit Music (for a Film)"

  THE WANNADIES, "You and Me Song"

  RADIOHEAD, "15 Steps"

  G
RIZZLY BEAR WITH VICTORIA LEGRAND, "Slow Life"

  LYKKE LI, "Possibility"

  BON IVER & ST. VINCENT, "Rosyln"

  DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, "Meet Me on the Equinox"

  GUILTY PLEASURES

  IN MY WORLD it's not okay to like the Black Eyed Peas. It doesn't matter how many albums they sell. It doesn't matter how many hit songs will.I.am writes or how many corporations use their music in advertisements. It doesn't matter that millions of people love them. In my world, if you choose to proclaim an admiration for the Black Eyed Peas, someone will scoff, "How embarrassing for you." As a matter of fact, that sounds like something I would say.

  Welcome to the world of music snobbery.

  It's not just the Black Eyed Peas who suffer this scorn, although they do have some of the more ludicrous lyrics in pop music ("Let's Get Retarded," anyone?) so they're a lightning rod for taunts. They are part of a world of music embraced by the mainstream and looked down upon by purists. Those considered unworthy of being taken seriously are generally chart-topping artists who write dumbed-down songs for teenagers, middle-aged people, and the unwashed masses of NASCAR enthusiasts. The Jonas Brothers, Celine Dion, Nickelback. A scenario in which you actually like any of these artists is only okay under the guise of a guilty pleasure.

  A guilty pleasure is the music you hesitate to admit to your friends that you like. It's the album you hide in the closet and the songs you hope don't come up if anyone else is in the room when your iTunes is shuffling. It's music that causes you to roll up the windows in your car for fear a pedestrian or biker might hear. Your guilty pleasures are a key part of what makes your taste in music unique, but admitting them to others can leave you feeling more vulnerable than a Feist song in Grey's Anatomy. There is nothing more loathsome than someone who proclaims she has no guilty pleasures because she's proud of everything she listens to. That person is either a fool with little actual knowledge of music or a pompous ass. You don't want any part of either one.

  I planned to begin by telling you that my guilty pleasure is Kylie Minogue. I was going to try to be cool, even in my selection of a guilty pleasure, and defend her work by explaining that she's recorded a duet with the Bukowski of dark pop, Nick Cave, played with performance-art acts like Fischerspooner, and been remixed by every credible producer under the sun. This was all going to illustrate that it's much cooler to like Kylie Minogue than you might realize. I was busted by my friend Gina.

  "Courtney," she said to me, "you need to write about your real guilty pleasure: the Pussycat Dolls."*

  It's true, I like the Pussycat Dolls. A lot. I don't mean I like them in the sense that one of their songs is a fluke earwig thing that caught my attention. I mean I get shivers of happiness when I hear "Stickwitu." I can sing along to every word of "Buttons." I flip my hair around and make a Megan Fox–ish pouty sexy face in the mirror to "Beep." There is no defending myself from this flagrant lapse in taste on any level. The Pussycat Dolls are the embodiment of a manufactured pop group, which is deplorable to people who consider themselves real music fans. Their outfits are excessively slutty, and they sing about gender politics with the kind of inane Spice Girls "girl power!" message that's light on substance and pisses off most women who consider themselves feminists. And now that I think about it, I cannot name anyone in the group except Nicole Scherzinger, who serves as their leader. The other women are interchangeable and replaceable. Literally. When an older-looking faux redhead left the group in 2008, she was replaced by another faux redhead who was about a decade younger and blended right in. Rumors on the Internet tell me there's a good chance everyone in the group except Scherzinger will be kicked out before their next album comes out, and I bet no one will even notice. This group is another example of how some people in the music industry think women are just dancing bodies who need a half shirt and heels and nothing else. I wish I could at least say something positive about their dance skills, but as my friend Lisa, a trained dancer, said to me when I asked for her opinion on the group, "They're basically strippers with some classical dance training."

  I realize most of what I've said so far has made a stronger case for hating the Pussycat Dolls than explaining my affection for them. I mean, it's not as though I like Lady Gaga, who benefits from the legitimacy of her whole performance-art angle, or Kelly Clarkson, who is at least a relatable human being—two artists who are absolutely not cool, but are justifiable. No, my weakness is the Pussycat Dolls. I will never try to convince you of their artistic merit. They're the Twinkies of my music consumption: sweet, empty calories inside an attractive spongy cake filled with enough preservatives to last a hundred years.

  Just the same, when a Pussycat Dolls song comes on the radio, I'm not at all inclined to change the station. I turn it up.

  I can't tell you what does or doesn't qualify as a guilty pleasure. It's different for every listener, but you know it when you feel yourself falling into a shame spiral when a particular song comes on. If you are either a) too embarrassed to let a record-store clerk look at your purchases, b) hiding music from your kids and the other carpool moms, or c) spending all your time with headphones on so your friends don't bust you on the "weird" music you like, then congrats! You've found your guilty pleasure.

  It's been easy for me to hide my guilty pleasure, as the relative merits of the Pussycat Dolls is a topic that rarely comes up in the world of indie-music snobs. In fact, the Pussycat Dolls are so broadly marketed that they owe no allegiance to any subculture and have no roots; that's part of what makes them so painfully uncool. It is also what makes it punk as fuck for a music snob to like them. If I embrace them in spite of the naysayers, that makes me the embodiment of the Devo song "Through Being Cool," wherein Devo philosophizes that the path to coolness is effortless. If you try to be cool, you never will be. By facing the slings and arrows of outrageous snobbery, I am singlehandedly bucking the trend against this girl group, who are underdogs in my judgmental world.

  It's like when Sid Vicious released his cover of the Sinatra standard "My Way" as his comeback single after the Sex Pistols broke up. The Sex Pistols were all about overthrowing the sort of bourgeois ethos that Frank Sinatra (as well as the classic rock of the '70s) embraced, so the punkest and most offensive thing Vicious could do in his first post-punk act would be to rail against the narrow ideological constraints of the punk scene by embracing something you would fully expect a punk to hate. One of the most nonconformist things I could do in a community of people who consider themselves above music for teenagers is to enjoy music for teenagers. I don't want you to like the Pussycat Dolls: it takes away from the awesomeness of my liking them.

  You don't have to be an indie-rock snob to consider the Pussycat Dolls a guilty pleasure. You could be a soccer mom with a minivan full of tweens and think yourself above them. You could be a high-school cheerleader who loved the Pussycat Dolls only to evolve into a coffee-loving college freshman who realizes they're the lamest. The ever-changing opinion of the masses heavily influences what is and is not a guilty pleasure, but so too does your musical self-image.

  Anthropologists will tell you music is traditionally a group activity used to unite tribes, like the use of religious music to express a shared belief in God. In modern times the music industry and its crack marketers have developed a different word for what used to be called tribes: demographics. The Pussycat Dolls are teenage music (please note, you do not have to actually be a teenager to fit into the teenage-music demographic): inauthentic, crude, and primitive in both topic and construction. Soccer-mom music is a few rungs up on the ladder, with less sophomoric lyrics and more complex musical structure, but still not a demographic a music snob would aspire to, as their taste is considered too middle of the road (in other words, dull, as in Michael Bublé, Coldplay).

  Indie-music fanatics, both male and female, are captivated by the idea of being first. We want to feel ownership over artists before anyone else even knows who they are, and we have a soft spot for atypical music with
lyrics that relate to our life experiences (see: Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, Björk). I, for one, will admit it: I am very concerned with my unique snowflake–ness. I worry about how cool I am and whether I know as much as other music snobs. I use what's on my iPod to impress guys I suspect of having a big record collection. I'm not a haphazard record collector, and I don't want to spend my time listening to music that makes me feel like I'm losing IQ points simply by turning it on. Except when I want the Pussycat Dolls.

  Music is constantly changing context, going from in vogue to outdated and back again, as a result of shifts in perception by both tastemakers (snobs like me) and the masses (everyone else, like my mom). Obviously, your own opinion on whether something is cool gets the most weight,* but it's undeniable that outside forces can come along and completely recast anyone's status. A band can swing from passé to hot again in a few thousand well-placed video streams (no, that doesn't mean you, Rick Astley—Rickrolling was too popular, so Astley stays in guilty-pleasure land). For example, take the curious case of Yacht Rock and Hall & Oates.

  Let's go way back to 1987. My first celebrity sighting ever was on a trip to New York City with my grandmother, aunt, and uncle when I was about ten. Somewhere in the wilds of the Upper East Side (well, it seemed wild to a ten-year-old from Texas with limited life experience), John Oates and his trademark mustache strolled by us. I did a double-take and had just enough time to say, "Hey was that ...," when Daryl Hall passed us too, about a block behind Oates. I out-and-out gawked at Hall. He gave me a wink and a knowing smile. IT WAS THEM! I tried for about twenty minutes to explain to my grandmother who Hall & Oates were. She still doesn't know.