You’re watching “Bones”.
Agent Booth turns on his car radio and out comes a beautiful, soft, romantic
song from the ‘90s. Booth glances at Bones who is sitting next to him. She
notices his glance and looks back at him "What?" she says. Sexual tension is
gripping the pair of them. Suddenly you’re no longer interested in whether Bones
and Booth are going to make out in the back seat of the car. All you want to do
is remember who sang that lovely romantic song that you're singing along with
and wondering where you can buy it.
You MUST know, so you try to catch
a few words and rush off to the computer to Google it. Meanwhile Bones or Booth
has said something wrong, and the moment of possible passion between them has
passed, but who cares? You have to have that song!
I wonder if shows in the Fifties,
like “Dragnet” or “Highway Patrol”, had songs playing in the background. I would
guess probably not. This is a much more recent trend, and gradually the music
played on television shows is becoming as important as the action. In “Cold
Case”, for example, the music is cleverly taken solely from the year in which
the action takes place. Several episodes of that show have featured the music of
only one artist. Such s Bruce Springsteen, or Pearl Jam.
When a show features a particular
song, it can have quite an effect on the career of the artist, and can inspire a
sudden surge in sales or downloads of the particular song. Sales of songs by
such artists as Fauxliage, The Decemberists, and The Bravery jumped dramatically
for a few days after episodes featuring their music aired.
Another group to benefit from
having their music played on TV is “The Kin”, who have had an upsurge in sales
of their songs having been featured in “Army Wives” and “Moonlight”. Speaking of
“Moonlight”, the vampire detective/love story which was inexplicably canceled
after just one season by CBS, that show’s fans were frantically searching for
the titles and singers of songs featured in each episode within seconds of the
show having aired. People on the west coast were on forums searching for the
music from fans on the east coast where the show had already been seen.
The rise of iTunes over the last
few years has been incredible to watch, and many fans of the shows have created
“iMixes” of songs played during their favorite shows. “Moonlight” has more than
its fair share of such fans.
One website gaining more and more
devoted fans nowadays is
www.TunesOnTheTube.tv which manages to list the songs played in shows
usually on the same day that they are broadcast and covers an incredible 80
popular shows, past and present.
