New Good Song: Big Machine by Ryan Miller

Here's a new good song -- "Big Machine" by Ryan Miller (lead singer of Guster)

How I found this song -- It is featured in the new good movie "Safety Not Guaranteed." A couple days after the movie it occurred to me that the song may have been recorded professionally and made available on a soundtrack. As it turns out, I was correct, and it was through a little Googling that I discovered that the lead singer of Guster was a person, named Ryan Miller, who wrote much of the music in the film. You may remember Guster from the 2000 good song "Fa Fa." This is not to be confused with the 2012 song "La La" by the Cab, which just barely makes the cut of goodness.

The studio version of "Big Machine" is available on iTunes but not featured on YouTube. There are actually three versions of the song on the soundtrack -- Ryan Miller's studio version, the same studio version sung by Mark Duplass, who performed the song in the movie, and an acoustic version by Duplass, representing the way it was sung in the film. I recommend one of the studio versions, which have fuller instrumentals.

Why is this song good? There's a cute anti-establishment message here delivered with an almost schoolyard melody. The best part is the pre-chorus ("Maybe I'm wrong and all that you get is what you see / maybe I'm right and there's something there to believe"). The chorus, which is weak, seems awkwardly similar to "Santaria" by Sublime, which is not a good song from which to borrow a chorus in the first place.

Are movies a good place to find new good songs? Probably not. Even if they were, that's an awfully expensive way to find songs, especially in New York. But soundtracks can be a decent source for new good songs. In fact, an instrumental track from the "Safety Not Guarnateed" soundtrack by Miller called "Time Machine," which reminds me of the opening of "Disarm" by Smashing Pumpkins (the band's only good song), is very nice indeed, but seemingly not posted on YouTube. Do check that one out. But you may recall that "Tonight" by John Legend is a new good song, and although the film in which it is featured was not how I personally found it, perhaps that is how others did so.

These days, songs featured in TV commercials do well on iTunes. Not to fault the artists or songs, but I don't happen to be wild about commercials springing a song into popularity. I would like to think that people like songs because of their innate qualities or perhaps the special feelings and memories the songs create, so when a song is featured in a commercial and then rises on iTunes, I'm disappointed in what seems to me to be a lack of emotional attachment to the music. Examples include "BURN IT DOWN" by Linkin Park, which is in an NBA Playoffs commercial, "Too Close" by Alex Care, which is in an ad for Internet Explorer, and "Ho Hey" by the Lumineers, featured in a commercial for Bing.

However, I did recently state that my favorite new good song right now is "Warrior" by Kimbra f/ Mark Foster & A-Trak, and not only is this song in a commercial for Converse Shoes, the video itself is a commercial for the shoes, even ending with the logo. According to Wikipedia:

The song was written as a part of "Three Artists, One Song", an annual series by shoe company Converse. The song was initially released as a free download in the "Three Artists, One Song" website. The song was later included in international and special editions of Kimbra's debut studio album, Vows. "Warrior" was released as the fourth single off Vows on May 4, 2012.

The music video premiered on the YouTube channel for Converse shoes on April 5, 2012. ^[2] The video features a group of prisoners being forced to wrestle, and being brutally beaten, with chairs and other objects, for the enjoyment of a man wearing a red sweater. Scenes of Kimbra singing with her arms tied while watching the fight are cut into the video. At the end, the wrestlers turn on the man wearing the red sweater, and Kimbra knocks him out. The video ends with Kimbra, A-Trak, and Mark Foster leaving the stadium. All of the wrestlers are wearing converse shoes.

So is this example of music in advertising any better, any cooler, any more legit? I think so, because it would seem that Converse had an active hand in even making this song happen, by bringing together three artists who wouldn't otherwise have collaborated. In that sense, the song would not exist if it weren't for Converse. In the case of, say, Internet Explorer featuring the Alex Care song, I suspect that a marketing team at Internet Explorer found the already existing song, paid for its use, and is using it not because they like it but because they hope it wil appeal to a target demographic. This isn't evil, wrong or bad by any means -- I have an MBA, so I get it -- but "Too Close" might appeal to me more if its rise up iTunes had been perceived by me to be based on the qualities of the song, not its repeated exposure through a TV commercial. Perhaps I need to update my perspective.