I will always tell you the truth.

Edit: So Griffin, I hear you coyly say, How would you build a Twilight soundtrack?

I'm glad you asked that question, shadow-audience. Surely, like purposefully singing off-key, scoring an awful movie requires no small amount of skill. Let's begin.

But how will you manage to dredge up a haunting yet romantic, cloudy-moody-skies love theme? THIS IS HOW


Well played. But how will you convey the stifling ennui that is being in love with a vampire at age 17? Why, that's easy I'll just give you some OH GOD DAMMIT SOMEONE HAS THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE ME AND MADE A COMPILATION VIDEO curses. It still works though. Just don't....don't watch it. Tab out.


I'm impressed so far. What about that luring sound to capture the essence of dreamy bein'in'love what will capture them young girls hearts and minds, BUT YET REMAIN TINGED WITH SADNESS? Ah, easy one there, I'd just sling some Bon Iver at them Oh dear, I'm afraid the real Twilight folks did that, they're disqualified CURSES! Very well.


You're really cooking now, chum. But these are all sad bastard songs! We need something that makes the ladies rip their bodices and wish desperately to be ravished by the dread vampire Flammablehair McGrimacey Lipcurl!
Allow me to drop one of the most sex-laden songs in the goddamn world. Cut some slow motion entrances in this and you'll have to mop up theatergoers after each viewing.


We're nearly there. But what about something we can peddle at Hot Topic, something from an indie-rock-pop group with an attractive female lead singer that appeals to the girlish masses and their dragged boyfriends alike?
Easy Peasy Paramo- No. FINE. SPIN ON THIS. LOOK AT HOW APPROPRIATE.


You're fucking welcome. God, I'm great. Yeah, you might as well just put on a frilly tutu and start making Team Edward-themed AMV's on youtube. That's how gay this whole farce was. It was a musical exercise shut up shut up.


I've dissected Twilight before, and nothing I say will be as witty or insightful as the hordes of more verbose and professional comedians who are going to leap (indeed, have probably already leaped leapt?) on this film.

Which I saw, by the way.

I bought a commemorative cup so that I may remember my New Moon experience forever.
Thankfully it depicts both oh-so-sinfully-hunky male leads flanking Whatsherface so I'm not forced to choose between Team Edward Broody Moodswing McFathead or Team Jacob Big McLargeHuge da Vincfucking seriously did you see that guys muscles.

(The obvious only acceptable answer is Team Alice/Jasper. Unfortunately, there wasn't a commemorative cup with them on it. Phooey.)

In all honesty, New Moon wasn't as bad as the first one.

Note the phrasing of this sentence. This is a wonderful logical strategy.
Observe: The bombing of Nagasaki wasn't as bad as the bombing of Hiroshima.

See? New Moon was relatively great.

My opinion might be tainted, however, by my personal viewing experience - id est, hearty chortling and cheerful shots of homemade skittle vodka paired with slackjawed facepalms and outraged song recognitions.

That last bit is the important bit.

I'm sure you all remember hearing 15 Step at the end of the first Twilight and groaning in the anticipation of a million Hot Topic-feeders suddenly claiming to love The Radioheads. And that Muse "theme song" was pretty alright too.

This second one had me raging a little harder - better songs, more diverse songs, from a larger pool of marketable artists.

That's the worst bit. In amongst the two -

Actually, let's reverse for a moment.

The Twilight Soundtrack's are a source of great fascination for me, because they just must be the end result of one of the most calculating and targeted marketing campaigns of the past few years.

The first one had a pretty predictable mix, all things considered.
It's divided into two categories: Vampire Romance, and Hot-Topic Teenage Movie.

In the Teenage Movie side we had a Linkin Park song, a Paramore song, and a song by the guy from Jane's Addiction. It's all pretty basic stuff, lala we're yooooung we're seeeexy lets frolick BUT I AM ALSO MOODY.

In the Vampire Romance side we have an Iron and Wine track, a second Paramore song, and some fiddly piano shit. Chicks dig that. and like any sweeping haunting professionally scored music set against flowing backdrops of the Pacific Northwest, it serves to set the scene perfectly. Suck on that.

New Moon added a third category: Sad Bastard Music.
Oh, there were still Teenage Movie songs and Vampire Romance songs intermixed but the general theme here was one of
HOPELESS
SOUL-DEVOURING
MISERY.

Here is the kicker: The franchise is, by now, such a goddamn money pinata that they were able to throw enough hustle-bucks at respectable artists that they recorded and released original and exclusive new tracks for the New Moon soundtrack.
This presents me with an odd dilemma. Do I on principle hate this music for being tainted not only with Twilight-venom, but blatant oily commercialism as well?
Or do I rejoice that some new songs have come out of left field by artists I enjoy and leave it at that?


There was a time when I would have been so fixed in Shun-Mode that I would've happily and ignorantly lambasted this music.
It is with great pride, then, that I can instead say that I'm able to be a grown-up about this business and just pick and choose the songs that are good, regardless of what teenage-girl emotional-pornography film it was produced for.

But back to the interesting point I was making: All of the good songs on this album blaze past the Teenage Movie section (which, if you were taking notes, contains new tracks by Death Cab for Cutie and The Killers. awful)
and the Vampire/Werewolf Romance section (new songs from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club whoever the fuck they are and Grizzly Bear you know who I don't think is great? Grizzly Bear. Fuck you, Everyone Indie. They Don't Sound Good. Neither does the Arcade Fire. Blow me.

Every good song is straight up distilled Sad Bastard Music.

Case in point: Thom Fucking Yorke put a song in.


Fucking OK Go, the most jubilant and sunny indiepoprock fuckers this side of Jupiter managed to make a sad bastard song.

Anya Marina and Lykke Li, two black-whirlpool level sad-girls-with-guitars each mailed in their contributions in sable envelopes.

And to cap it all off you can tell I've written this entire fucking travesty of a post just to get to this point, can't you Bon Iver - Motherfucking Bon No-Song-I've-Written-Hasn't-Resulted-In-Someone's-Suicide Iver - decided to team up with quindiessential (See what I did there? I thought that was really clever) St. Vincent lady to deliver this most hollow-hearted, life-is-over emotion bomb of a song.




Bon Iver has just become an accepted musical trope.
You play that stupid "hope you had the time of your lives" Green Day song Pomp & Circumstance at graduations, "Play That Funky Music White Boy" Wagner's Bridal Chorus at weddings, Rapper's Delight semi-unironically at high-school reunions....

And you play Bon Iver when you want to curl up into a ball and die of sadness.

Do you know the story? Do you know how Justin Vernon broke up with his girlfriend and band simultaneously, contracted mono, and locked himself in a cabin in Wisconsin for a winter? Decided to make an album with what he had with him? He just overlapped him playing his guitar and singing wordless melodies and added whatever words worked later.
In his own words: "I...went up there because I didn’t know where else to go and I knew that I wanted to be alone and I knew that I wanted to be where it was cold."
And he emerged three months later with an album - the saddest album that has ever been made.
Yeah. Episode of House where Amber died? That was Bon Iver.
I mean it's musically good, skilled, but if you can get that far past listening to it you're doing something wrong.
When you hear Bon Iver the correct reaction is to become ashen-faced and broken hearted.
Listen to this song. Listen and if, after that little loop halfway in, you aren't thinking about every regret you'll ever have, you aren't making enough regrets.

I suppose it was appropriate, that's what the characters in the film were doing when this song was played. So, in all musical respects, it's a fine song.

Am I okay with people hearing it and going "Bon Iver? I LOVE this guy! I love ALL his music!"?

Am I okay with reading this (verbatim) youtube comment posted only an hour ago: "i agree completely. Though im a twilight fan I havent heard of Thom Yorke before , and this song had me sold!"?


Yes. I'm fine with it. How great is that. They're learning about good bands through shit movies and maybe, just maybe, some of them will go and download some other songs by these artists and get into them and wouldn't that just be a triumph for music.
Think of how much worse it could have been. Think of how much Miley Cirus and Green Day there could have been.

You know what's going to happen now? The Twilight fanbase is going to glue to the indie-subculture and start liking bullshit bands like Grizzly Bear and parroting Pitchfork mag's bullshit reviews about their album being "compositionally and sonically airtight" (actual quote). Musicians will pander and everything will be ruined forever. Again. Due to vampires.