Peter M Fitzgerald
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Mar 21, 1999
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- Real Name
- Peter Fitzgerald
This has puzzled me a lot, through this modern "golden age" of TV drama we're been living in for the past decade or so. While popular songs and other pre-existing music has featured in many TV series since the beginning of the medium (and the long-term rights issues surrounding them have often been troublesome, i.e. WKRP in Cincinnati), they seem to have gained particular artistic importance in modern, cinematic dramas like The Sopranos, Mad Men, Fargo, The Americans, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Ray Donovan, etc. With rights and credits being so important these days (look at any feature film's lengthy end-credit crawl), it's sort of amazing to me --with premium cable/streaming series originals, at least, where the end credit roll isn't crunched or ultra-fast-- that if a song is prominently featured in an episode (or is used as the background for the end credits), there would be an onscreen credit at the end, featuring the song title and performer.
Some tunes used are, of course, pretty famous, and thus no-brainers, but many times there's a song (or instrumental piece) that is intriguing, that I'll be lucky to find using a key word search on Google or YouTube. So many times on YouTube, if I happen to find a tune I already know pretty well, there will invariably be comments beneath saying, "Dexter brought me here" or "Ray Donovan brought me here". Considering the expense involved and legal hurdles to be cleared to include such music in the episodes in the first place, one would think there would be the desire to include song credits as promotion for music sales and the artists and rights owners involved.
Here are a couple of recent examples:
Fargo: Season 2, Episode 2 - "Before the Law"... using IMDB to refresh my memory, these featured prominently in the episode:
"Reunion" - preformed by Bobby Gentry
"One Hour Ahead of the Posse" - performed by Burl Ives
"Song of the Soul" - performed by Cris Williamson
"The Eve of War" - performed by Jeff Wayne and Richard Burton, from the album, "War of the Worlds"
Ray Donovan: Season 3, Episode 6 - "Swing Vote"...
Apart form the other music featured in it, the episode ended with a killer tune that I could've sworn was some forgotten B-side effort from the mid-1960s: "Sting Like a Bee", perhaps a Peggy Lee or Doris Day sound-alike trying something 'Mod'. Surprisingly, it was a brand new song, recorded in 2014 by a UK group, The Mighty Sceptres:
Sure, I was able to do a tiny bit of detective work to find the song, but isn't it odd that this isn't listed somewhere at the end, like a modern movie would (though not nearly as long... a quick extra screen or so, taking up a second or so of running time)? No biggie, of course, and there's probably a simple explanation, but it's still something that has raised my curiosity several times in the last few years while watching this stuff.
Some tunes used are, of course, pretty famous, and thus no-brainers, but many times there's a song (or instrumental piece) that is intriguing, that I'll be lucky to find using a key word search on Google or YouTube. So many times on YouTube, if I happen to find a tune I already know pretty well, there will invariably be comments beneath saying, "Dexter brought me here" or "Ray Donovan brought me here". Considering the expense involved and legal hurdles to be cleared to include such music in the episodes in the first place, one would think there would be the desire to include song credits as promotion for music sales and the artists and rights owners involved.
Here are a couple of recent examples:
Fargo: Season 2, Episode 2 - "Before the Law"... using IMDB to refresh my memory, these featured prominently in the episode:
"Reunion" - preformed by Bobby Gentry
"One Hour Ahead of the Posse" - performed by Burl Ives
"Song of the Soul" - performed by Cris Williamson
"The Eve of War" - performed by Jeff Wayne and Richard Burton, from the album, "War of the Worlds"
Ray Donovan: Season 3, Episode 6 - "Swing Vote"...
Apart form the other music featured in it, the episode ended with a killer tune that I could've sworn was some forgotten B-side effort from the mid-1960s: "Sting Like a Bee", perhaps a Peggy Lee or Doris Day sound-alike trying something 'Mod'. Surprisingly, it was a brand new song, recorded in 2014 by a UK group, The Mighty Sceptres:
Sure, I was able to do a tiny bit of detective work to find the song, but isn't it odd that this isn't listed somewhere at the end, like a modern movie would (though not nearly as long... a quick extra screen or so, taking up a second or so of running time)? No biggie, of course, and there's probably a simple explanation, but it's still something that has raised my curiosity several times in the last few years while watching this stuff.
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