Music is so important to the atmosphere of a film, but when a ton of projects use the same trick over and over, it can start to send the wrong message. The modern trend of slow sad covers of popular songs used to market films has grown tired, boring, and often unintentionally hilarious.
Whether a film uses an original orchestral score or aperfectly-placed needle drop, the right track can make or break a scene. It’s borderline impossible to find a film trailer without a backing musical track, and there’s a reason for that. Relying on certain gimmicks runs the risk of leaving audiences thinking more about the bad music than the film.
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Most people know what this unfortunate trend refers to. A film trailer or a particularly emotional moment wants to use music to sell its emotional weight. Instead of picking the perfect track or hiringa gifted composer towrite something new, they just make a well-known pop song slower and sadder. There are countless examples, some much more egregious than others. Marvel fans may remember the opening credits fromBlack Widow, which were set to Malia J’s cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. It wasn’t just that the song had nothing to dowith the scene being depicted. It wasn’t just that the cover, though performed well enough, felt wildly out of place. The real problem is that fans have heard so many grim ballad covers of their favorite hits of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s, that it ceases to evoke any feeling besides “ugh, another one?”.
This trend is undoubtedly still much more popular in trailers than it is in film. The trend was likely started by David Fincher’s 2010biopicThe Social Network. That film’s first trailer used a version of the iconic loser anthem “Creep” by Radiohead that was recorded by Belgian choir Scala & Kolacny Brothers. Interestingly, Scala & Kolacny Brothers already worked regularly in covers of American pop music.Social Networkisn’t the first example of this trend, but it does seem to be the one that elevated the concept to modern popularity. It also seemed to catapult Scala & Kolacny Brothers to some incredible heights.
They went on to provide the music for a variety of other examples of this trend. Their version of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” was used in the trailer forZero Dark Thirtyin 2013. The same year sawBeautiful Creaturesuse their cover of Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People”. Their version of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” was used in the trailer for the Princess Diana biopicSpencerjust last year. Their take on “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis made it into theseries finale ofLucifer. They do fantastic covers, not one of these tracks is anything less than excellent, but it’s a shame that everyone keeps using their work in the same way.
Superhero movies are fairly huge culprits in this issue. Marvel’s biggest entry into the trend was probablyAvengers:Age of Ultron.That 2014 trailer was highly praised for its use of “I’ve Got No Strings” fromPinocchio,which wound up being a recurring reference point in the film’s script. Despite the slightly distasteful Disney cross-promotion, it’s one of the best examples of this trend, thanks to its relevance and continued involvement in the script. Conversely, the DCEU’s originalSuicide Squadused ConfidentialMX’s cover of “I Started a Joke”, and was accused of misleading the audience when the film was finally released.The New Mutantsdropped a slow and sad version of “Another Brick in the Wall”, managing to make it sound more boring than anything. But, as in every other metric,Morbiusis the worstof the batch. That film used a techno cover of Beethoven’s “Für Elise” which was simultaneously pretentious and overwhelmingly dumb.
To examine the list of films that used this tired gimmick in full, it’s a staggering number. Denis Villeneuve’sDunebrought in Hans Zimmer to make Pink Floyd’s “Eclipse” feel bigger.Rambo: Last Bloodcapped off Sylvester Stallone’s most iconic role by adding chugging guitar to Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”. The trailerforTop Gun: Maverickfeatured a slow sad cover of theTop Guntheme song, an overused sub-trend of the larger trend that is somehow even more unpleasant. This is not to say that all of these examples are bad. Some of them are stellar, granting the trailer a weight that it wouldn’t have otherwise. However, nothing exists in a vacuum. Every film that takes this technique does it in a world where the next three to five trailers a viewer sees could do the same thing.
Producing a slow and sad cover of a beloved song isn’t a bad technique in theory, but when everyone does the same thing, any variety becomes prized. Movie fans will have to wait and see whether more movies have the guts to make the centerpiece of their marketing their sweeping soundtrack, so we can all stop listening to classics at 0.5x.
