I bumped into this one during some random websurfing today and realized that even though it’s been around for years I never got around to actually posting it. Odd, considering it’s a silly random music meme. I’m all about that, right?
Anyway. Without further ado, blah blah blah:
IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
So, here’s how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing (feel free to annotate, since snarky commentary is half the fun)
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend that you’re cool…
(I’m fudging on Rule #6 in my usual way: If it’s a foreign-language track or an instrumental, I will use my discretion. If you don’t like it, too bad. My journal, my meme post.)
Opening credits: “Beastie,” Jethro Tull – Ominous. And yet, the opening lines do describe the arc of one’s life, after a fashion… “From early days of infancy, through trembling years of youth, long murky middle-age and final hours long in the tooth…”
Waking up: “Hallo Spaceboy,” Pet Shop Boys w/ David Bowie – “Do you like girls or boys” is not what I’m thinking first thing in the morning, for the record.
First day of school: “Amlapura,” Tin Machine – Er. Never mind the back-to-back Bowie, this just makes no sense whatsoever here. “Never saw in all my life a more shining jewel,” indeed.
Falling in love: “Back to Back,” Tony Banks – This song has precisely nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Love scene: “Hollowman,” Econoline Crush – If I’m making love while angsty, shouty alterna-rock plays on a nearby sound system, somebody please slap me.
Breaking up: “Airhead,” Thomas Dolby – “You ask me, do I love you, does the Pope live in the woods? Quad Erat Demonstrandum, baby (‘Ooo, you speak French!’)” Apparently in this movie version of my life I broke up with someone for being a ditz? Huh.
Life is good: “Easy Lover,” Philip Bailey w/ Phil Collins – I… don’t know what to say to this except to question on which level of life things are good. Below the waistline, sunshine? (Name that tune. Hah!)
Mental Breakdown: “Anything,” The Damned – We finally have something that fits the slot to a T. “Anything, anything, anything… is better than THIS!”
Driving: “Be With Me,” VAST – Wouldn’t this have made more sense earlier on? Could we swap this with the Econoline Crush track? Please?
Flashback: “Lean To The Inside,” Electronic – A vocals-free track that… actually kind of works. I think. In my warped little brain, anyway. The Tony Banks track earlier in the list would be better, though.
Getting back together: “Here,” VAST – “Hold me now, you know I am so afraid to love… at all.” Okay, though that’s not really what the song is about as far as I can tell…
Wedding: “Army of Me,” Bjork – Well, that’s a bit surreal.
Birth of Child: “Dreaming,” BT – “Walk with me, the future’s at hand, here with us, here where we stand.” Again, not a perfect fit but not completely amiss either… huh.
Final Battle: “Lament,” KOTOKO – I can think of worse tracks for this slot. (I tend to put the darker, techno-industrial KOTOKO tracks on my music player rather than the bouncey pop fluff.) I approve, though one of the Econoline Crush tracks could be swapped into this slot and work out better than where they ended up…
Death Scene: “General Crossing,” Jethro Tull – Well, it is all about going over to the other side. In the Cold War, though. Whoops.
Funeral song: “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da,” The Police – No, I don’t think so. Couldn’t we have had Clint Mansell’s “Death Is The Road To Awe” in this slot instead? Bah.
End Credits: “Burnt,” Econoline Crush – It’s… a song, I guess. Once again, Econoline Crush jumps into a slot that it doesn’t quite fit, though. Maybe bring KOTOKO’s “Lament” down here? Hmm.
And there you have it, such as it is. I hope you were as amused by reading as I was by annotating!
The purists (if such a word applies here, especially considering how many variants I ran into while coming up with this rendition) who’ve done this one before will note that I’ve left out the “Prom” selection. I doubt that anyone I know will complain.
Also, these results come from the subset of my library which lives on the portable player. I figured it’d help confine the track selection to things some people might have actually heard of. Stranger things have happened, right…?
