I watch three television programs regularly: Fringe, Survivor and How I Met Your Mother. Fringe gives me my dramatic/sci-fi fix, with the added bonus of the deeply fascinating Walter Bishop. Survivor gives me my half-guilty/half-comico-serious sociological fix, with the added bonus of digitally obscured body parts. How I Met Your Mother gives me my slightly dorky sitcom fix, with the added bonus of Neil Patrick Harris. It’s that final show that serves as the introduction for discussion of Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest.
(A note on “selling-out” before we proceed: I’ve written way too much about the corporate appropriation of songs that I love in this forum. It is, however, an inescapable topic. You can’t throw a rock in the pop culture universe without hitting a song that you love shilling for a car company.)
At the sappy conclusion of a recent How I Met Your Mother, the narrator talked over a sappy montage while (wait for it) “Two Weeks” played in the background. “Two Weeks!” I told Kevin months ago that “Two Weeks” was maybe the fourth best song recorded by anyone ever. And now I have to hear it serving to inform the mood of a middling television comedy? Curses!
Such a wretchedly mismatched money grab would usually have me hitting the “move to trash” button in the itunes and/or snapping records over my knee like a steroidal first baseman. Matt and Kim (or someone else, no offense) pull a stunt like that and they’re off the list for a while. With “Two Weeks” (and Veckatimest as a whole) I was completely unfazed. The orchestral brilliance of Droste and company drowned out the last few minutes of the television show. “Two Weeks” only served to highlight how ephemeral most modern media is. I will not remember CBS’s Monday lineup when I’m fifty. I am, however, going to be listening to Veckatimest for the next fifteen years and still finding new things to love.
Veckatimest comes on two records if you’re into the vinyl thing. Side four (“While You Wait For Others,” “I Live With You,” and “Foreground”) might have made my best of 2009 list by itself. “Two Weeks” is a song that I want played at my funeral. Everything else is (to a degree) a bonus.
Grizzly Bear – Fine for Now – Live
As an added bonus, the video for “Ready, Able” is easily the most terrifying music video of the year. So there’s that as well.
I think licensing your song for a tv show or a movie is a lot different than licensing your song for a commercial. Especially a song that has already been released. It’s not like Grizzly Bear wrote this song specifically for HIMYM so they could get on the soundtrack and move more units. Someone at the show probably had a similar connection to the song that you did and wanted to place it in the show. There wasn’t even a “music from tonight’s episode by…available at Best Buy”crap.
Agreed on that, Kevin. Although, to me, it was so incredibly awkward. I had the show on in the background as noise (wasn’t even paying attention) when it came on. It completely drenched out anything that was being said on the show. I just think this was WAY too strong of a song for a sitcom. I’ve also discussed at length that I think the licensing of songs for television completely depends on WHAT show. I think bands should take more care in this, or at least have more control over where these songs end up. I’d never want my music on Grey’s Anatomy, for example.
Both Kevin’s take too light a stance. The easiest way out is this: don’t sell your music to anybody. The several thousand dollars you’ll make from a television show or a commercial or a movie or a whatever aren’t worth your integrity. (Easy for me to say with my cushy teaching job and secure financial position, but I stand by it. Whatevs.)