Heard It On TV...

I may watch too much television. Though, I’ve been introduced to a number of songs because of hearing them on a TV show or commercial. I believe I started this trend of searching out songs heard on TV from watching The Partridge Family and The Monkees. But I’ve also tracked down songs after hearing it on a commercial. One song I very specifically remember searching out after hearing it on a Dewar’s commercial in 2007. The song was “Up the Walls” by PT Walkley. It’s insanely catchy – and the whole album …And The Adventures of Track Rabbit is pretty good too.

 

Of course, I’ve been searching out songs heard on television for years and compiling my own TV Show soundtracks from the music I heard. Gilmore Girls introduced me to Wilco (“Heavy Metal Drummer”), The White Stripes (“Fell In Love With A Girl”), and The Shins (“So Says I”). I also first heard the great song, “Satellite of Love” by Lou Reed on the Gilmore Girls season 4 finale. Though, I think my Gilmore Girls playlist consists for more than 70 tunes that I dig that were used in the show (they used a lot of XTC in the show too – which, as you know, I love).

 

Grey’s Anatomy’s first 2 seasons also helped contribute dozens of songs to my ever expanding music collection. “Miss Halfway” by Anya Marina, “Dead Streets” by Monotypes, “Infinity” by Merrick, “Someone To Love” by Kate Earl, “Blood and Peanut Butter” by B.C. Camplight, and “Look At Her Face” by The Coral Sea are a few of the songs that have gotten a lot of airtime on my playlists in recent years. Grey’s also has featured a number of Brandi Carlile songs that caused me to further explore her song catalog. My favorite of hers from Grey’s Anatomy is probably “Throw It All Away”.

 

Bones introduced me to a handful of songs – like the Placebo cover of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”, the obscure but memorable “Better” by The Blue Shoes, and John Francis Daly’s band, Dayplayer, extremely likable pop song “Neverending Summer” – (all of these songs come highly recommended, by the way). Chuck is another show that gave me a number of songs and artists to explore. “Challengers” by The New Pornographers, “Foux Du Fafa” by Flight of the Conchords, “Creature Fear” by Bon Iver, “Into Your Dream” by Foreign Born, “My Absent Will” by Meredith Bragg, “Fresh Feeling” by Eels, and “Fall Into Place” by Apartment are a few of those songs. It also reminded me of a couple ‘80s songs I hadn’t heard for years – like “Love on the Rocks” by Neil Diamond and Huey Lewis & The News’ “Power of Love”.

 

Castle is another TV show that has caused me to track down several dozen songs. The extremely upbeat and poppy “Birds of a Feather” by The Rosenbergs was the first Castle featured song I tracked down. “Move You” by Anya Marina is a well-crafted foot-tapper with a driving beat (I especially love the last 35 seconds of the song). MoZella’s tunes were featured a few times in the show and my favorite is probably the soulful ballad, “Can’t Stop”. “Everybody Loves Me” by OneRepublic is strangely addictive and has received a lot of plays in the last year or so.  Anna Waronker performed a couple original songs for the show’s fictitious singer-songwriter, Haley Blue – notably “Threshold”, though “Underground” is also very catchy. Sara Jackson-Holman’s dreamlike ballad, “Into The Blue” is featured prominently in the season 2 finale – and it’s a gorgeous song with a captivating piano part and expressive lyrics. And possibly my favorite song that I heard on Castle is “The Other Side” by Sloan. It immediately grabbed my attention with its pop hooks on top of powerful electric guitars, multipart vocal harmonies, and stomping rhythm.

 

Though, the show that has probably the most extensive soundtrack in my music collection is from Cold Case. Of course, it featured at least half a dozen tunes in each episode from whatever era the episode is dealing with. The show exposed me to a number of songs from years gone by – some of which you don’t often hear on the oldies or classic rock stations. KC & The Sunshine Band’s song “Please Don’t Go” and Anne Murray’s “Broken Hearted Me”, for example, have received an embarrassingly high amount of plays over the last couple years . I also first heard Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” on an episode of Cold Case.  The ‘40s tune, “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” by Louis Jordan was recently added to my collection after hearing it on an episode. 

 

There were also a few original pieces like the piano piece, “Best Friends” composed by Michael Levine. My favorites from the show though are the 1920s inspired jazz song, “300 Flowers” and the 1950s sounding ballad, “Scarlet Rose.” Both are fantastic songs – “300 Flowers” has the bendy notes, jazzy chords, and fantastic lyrics. “Scarlet Rose” starts out similar to The Flamingos’ version of “I Only Have Eyes for You” with its 6/8 piano part – but I adore the melody and Alexa Kahn does a great vocal performance. Both songs do a great job of capturing the time of the episodes.

 

Of course, there are tons of other songs I adore that I’ve heard on the telly, but for now I’ll leave you with this.