Music recycling in popular movies

bart on 2005-03-01T08:47:41

Sometimes I hate the industry. With tens of decent songs being written every day, you'd expect them to be able to come up with something more original... but no. It's not as if they don't spend money on it, no, the videos and everything look expensive. Take Shark Tale as an example. Why on earth did they have to recycle Rose Royce's "Car Wash" for it? Not that it's badly done, but it annoys the heck out of me that I still remember the original so well. It's enough for me to dislike the movie.

But the worst new example, and a total waste of money and talent, is from the successor to Bridget Jones' Diary, it's a song performed by Jamie Cullum, one of the most talented and promising young musicians currently walking this earth. Huge was my disappointed to find the song is only a poor carbon copy of a mellow track from the seventies. Argh! What a waste of talent!

So why do they do it? I don't really know. I take it's a fear of taking chances. They don't want to risk their neck, so they fall back on something proven. The net result is, of course, a huge feeling of deja vue with the audience. Which is rather annoying, boring and bland, not fresh at all.

Just as a token of what could have been, here's two original tracks from unknown people. Enjoy.