It happens to everyone. You’re watching your evening melodrama of choice when a song of unknown origin comes on in the background. It sounds indie, so you have no idea who sings this song and you have absolutely no hope of getting it out of your head until you find out how you can possibly hear it again.
Within the last four years, the trend of television shows turning viewers on to relatively unknown music has been on the rise. Shows like “Gilmore Girls,” “The O.C.,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “One Tree Hill” have been opening viewers’ eyes, ears and more importantly, viewers’ wallets to the sounds of underground indie bands like The Shins, Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire.
Phantom Planet’s “California,” the iconic opening theme to FOX’s powerhouse, “The O.C.,” became a globally recognized anthem to West Coast life and leisure for a show that single-handedly morphed the nation’s perception of Orange County from a Los Angeles backwater to a sparkling gem of glamour and power, regardless of whether this new perception is realistic or not.
“Television has become the new music video,” said Rachel Malkin, a graduating student in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television with a focus on film and television. “These songs and these bands don’t have their own medium. There used to be MTV where they could make a music video. That was how the industry used to work.”
More and more, underground indie bands ““ indie rock bands, to be more specific ““ are having their songs featured in primetime television.
For these previously unacknowledged bands, this exposure is not only monetarily beneficial, but lets them influence and reflect the society of music-listeners on the other end of the TV.
“The opening song to a show becomes so popular and so well-known that it becomes part of your culture,” said Dominic Nunneri, a first-year political science student and avid soundtrack connoisseur. “Like the “˜Friends’ theme song, this generation, any time they hear that song, they’re going to think of “˜Friends’ and they can relate to other people off of that song.”
Indie rock has become something like the genre of choice for college students with popular taste. Downloading bands no one has ever heard of became a point of pride. And while television helped kick-start the indie trend, for many graduating students, the gateway album into the world of indie rock was the “Garden State” soundtrack. In 2004, The Shins enjoyed an overt plug in the independent chestnut of a film, “Garden State.” According to Natalie Portman’s character, “They’ll change your life.”
“I remember buying the (“Garden State”) soundtrack and none of those bands were anything I would ever listen to before, but it was just a really good soundtrack that I’ve played a lot and it was a part of my life and it was perfect,” Mariam Mohajer-Rahbari said with a nostalgic laugh. “And I still listen to the songs.”
Mohajer-Rahbari, a third-year psychology student, admitted that music has never been one of her passions ““ “I don’t live, eat, breathe music” ““ but that exposure to this new genre of music has left her more receptive to their alternative sounds.
Between the sandwiching years of 2002 and 2007, music by The Shins has been featured everywhere from episodes of “One Tree Hill,” “Gilmore Girls,” “Scrubs,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The O.C.” and even “The Sopranos,” to Gap commercials and McDonald’s ads.
“I still don’t spend a lot of time seeking out (indie) music because I guess it’s not exactly my personality type,” she added. “But I do listen to different stations on the radio that have that type of music playing and I’m more willing to go to an underground show that I wouldn’t have before.”
It stands to reason that the music is not the only thing being promulgated by television and movies, seeing as how concert tickets, band T-shirts, new haircuts and tighter jeans tend to come along for the ride as musical listeners adopt a new genre into their repertoire. But not surprisingly, opinions vary regarding whether consumers can simply buy the music without buying the lifestyle that hovers around it.
“Is it the music that’s inspiring you to dress like that and act like that or is it vice versa?” Malkin said rhetorically. “I can listen to The Shins but it’s not inspiring me to go to those scene clubs and it’s not going to make me watch those TV shows. But for some people, that’s going to work for them because some people are mainstream people. They like when their music (and) their TV shows all reflect what they’re trying to do in their lives.”
It is undeniable that television and film have, to an increasing degree, been appropriating the sounds and styles of underground subcultures for decades. Jazz, rock and roll, surf rock, rap, punk, hip-hop, grunge and now indie rock are all musical trends in American history that have started out as underground movements but ““ thanks to the modern marvels of the big and silver screens ““ have been mass introduced for an eager public to sift through.
Similarly, while these genres of music were being presented to the public, the lifestyles and social identities that were essential to the styles were being dispersed into the mainstream as well. As much today as in years past, this fad has multiple side effects.
“I think that it’s good that (indie) bands are getting exposure because … the nation and the world was so obsessed with terrible singers that (don’t) even sing,” Mohajer-Rahbari said.
“I think that, in that sense, it’s good that (television and film) are exposing these real musicians. At the same time, I think it really is causing a change in style and fashion. It’s influencing fashion, and it is a movement.”