Brian Boydon music
If I see another TV medical drama where someone is on a life-support machine and a Snow Patrol song starts playing in the background, I'll vomit up my entire body weight. What in the name of Dr Finlay's Casebook (now there was a show) is going on with Snow Patrol and TV medical dramas?
People die and a Snow Patrol song plays; people break up and a Snow Patrol song plays. Sometimes it seems that the only two songs being played on TV shows these days are Runand Chasing Cars.
You have to wonder if Gary Lightbody & Co did a Robert Johnson on this, but instead of selling their soul to the devil at the crossroads, they were promised a fast-track route out of going-nowhere-indieville in return for two earnest and emoting songs that could be used over and over again during the sad bits on TV medical dramas.
Joining them recently in the life-support-machine music stakes are that dreadful bunch of God-botherers called The Fray, whose entire multi-platinum selling career can be put down to the fact that they wrote a song that sounded like an insipid cross of Runand Chasing Carsand got it played on Grey's bloody Anatomy.
The Fray's noisome How To Save A Lifesounds like it was written to order, as if they were continually watching videos of all the sad bits on Grey's Anatomyand putting together a song that out-sadded Snow Patrol.
And all these songs sound exactly the same: the singer drops down a register, he (and it's always a he) slows down the phrasing and leaves supposedly meaningful pauses between certain words. The lyrics are always ploddingly portentous and have to be catch-all sad because if all the TV medical dramas turn it down, it will have to be shipped out to more general-type dramas.
Now that bands, labels and - more importantly - publishing companies have cottoned on to the fact that a contrived piece of musical poignancy nonsense can prise open the record shop cash tills if placed on a prime-time TV drama, expect more life-support-machine music in the near to distant future.
By sublime contrast, the recent Life On MarsTV drama on BBC excelled itself in how it positioned its music soundtrack onto the unfolding drama. The show was about a police officer who, after being hit by a car in 2006, suddenly found himself transported back to 1973. Even allowing for the fact that 1973 was a particularly golden time for music (Glam Rock ahoy!), Life On Marsunearthed some nuggets in The Strawbs' Lay Me Downand Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again, Naturally.
To get some indication of how well Life On Marsused music, consider this strange fact: Paul McCartney never, ever allows any of his songs to be licensed out to TV shows or films. When the producers of the show wanted to use his Live And Let Diesong, they were initially refused permission by the record company who gave the standard "McCartney never lets his songs be used like this" excuse. Undeterred, they sent some tapes of the show to McCartney and the next day got a call from McCartney's office saying "Paul loves it, you can go ahead and use it".
If you missed the show, don't worry; you can get the soundtrack album. Also on there are The Faces with Cindy Incidentally, The Sweet with Blockbuster, ELO with 10538 Overture, Slade with Coz I Luv Youand the surprisingly brilliant Lindisfarne with Meet Me On The Corner. This really is one of the best TV soundtrack albums of recent years, if not decades.
Meanwhile, let's pull the plug on life-support machine music.
Life On Mars - the soundtrack album is on the Sony/BMG label
