|
| |
Friday Night Lights:
Original Television Soundtrack
(Adrenaline)
First Appeared in The Music Box, August 2007, Volume 14, #8
Written by John Metzger
The Emmy Awards has become something of an enigma. On the one hand, the
ceremony has recognized excellent television programs that the public largely
has ignored — such as Arrested Development and, absurd as it now might
seem, The Office. It rightly celebrated 24 for its 2005–2006
season and snubbed it for 2006–2007. By contrast, the Academy of Television Arts
and Sciences has an annoying habit of making the same nominations, year after
year, regardless of merit — Two and a Half Men, anyone? Last year, after
winning a statue for best director in a drama series, 24’s John Cassar
declared, "We’re working in the new golden age of television. Let’s enjoy
it." Whether Cassar’s statement truly resonated with anyone is debatable, but
the fact of the matter is that he was absolutely right.
Contrary to popular belief, television isn’t a vast wasteland anymore. Sure,
there still are a lot of terrible programs on the air, but in recent years,
numerous captivating and thought-provoking series have sprouted in some unlikely
places. Television’s renaissance famously was led by HBO. In reshaping the
manner in which the medium was viewed, the makers of The Sopranos were
able to delve far deeper into the hearts and minds of their characters, thus
covering more ground and providing more insight than they could have done via a
two- or three-hour movie. For the most part, the show has fared well at the Emmy
Awards, but in what has become a typically puzzling pattern, its successors — Six Feet Under and, more egregiously, The Wire — have been unjustly
ignored.
Regardless, the ideas that The Sopranos introduced thankfully have
infiltrated network television. The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin’s masterwork,
premiered nine months after The Sopranos; two years later, the
groundbreaking framework of 24 followed suit. In 2006, Friday Night
Lights, which was an unlikely spinoff of a theatrical film, raised the bar
even further. Arguably, its 22 episodes composed the finest and the most
consistent debut season of any television program — ever.
Although Friday Night Lights revolves around the world of high school
football, its purview is, in actuality, much wider. By utilizing
documentary-style camera movements to capture the happenings in the small,
fictional town of Dillon, Texas, series creator Peter Berg lends an intimacy to
the proceedings that makes the emotional turbulence of his characters’
experiences all the more palpable. If football is viewed as a metaphor for war,
then Berg unpretentiously is examining the impact of a post-9/11 world on middle
America. It is an unflinching, psychological study of what makes people — and
more specifically, Americans — tick.
The key to Friday Night Lights is its setting. Is there a better place
for creating a microcosm of society than the confines of a high school? Probably
not. It is precisely this backdrop that allows the writers to work their magic
through a remarkably diverse set of characters. There are traditional families
and single parents, and their make-up cuts across both class and ethnic lines,
thus allowing a variety of issues to be explored fully. The manner in which the
high school football star, his family, and his town react to his paralyzing
injury is, of course, central to the storyline. Likewise, the plague of steroid
abuse — which long has been the dirty little secret of high school, college, and
professional sports — is viewed through the lens of someone who believes,
rightly or wrongly, that his football career is the only possible way that he
can lift his family out of poverty.
At the same time, Friday Night Lights has delved into a broader range
of topics, which have run the gamut from alcoholism to teenage sexuality, from
racism to rape, and from the war in Iraq to America’s failing health care
system. No judgment is ever passed, and the events that transpire never appear
as if they have been forced into place. Much like real life, they simply happen,
and as their repercussions ripple through the town, every possible viewpoint is
presented. It’s here, within the show’s honest depiction of life in America,
that Friday Night Lights gains its heart and soul.
Still, there is one area where television, particularly on the major
networks, continues to lag behind the cinema. For years, the best movies have
had a tendency to utilize music as a means of bolstering and flavoring the ideas
and moods that are presented on the screen. Songs are carefully selected, and
scenes are fastidiously constructed so that one medium can inform the other.
Martin Scorsese, for example, incorporated a lengthy list of tunes into Good
Fellas, and none of them felt out of place.
On television, however, the usage of music frequently feels like an
advertising campaign. This undoubtedly is a direct result of the fact that there
isn’t a traditional framework available to serve as a guide. The larger factor,
however, likely stems from the heavy-handedness of corporate suits who are
operating within an increasingly consolidated entertainment environment. Instead
of directors having the freedom to choose a song that is best suited to a scene,
material is presented based upon what the record labels want to push.
Commerce and art have been intertwined for centuries, of course, but whenever
business concerns become the determining factor for an artistic vision, problems
inevitably develop. One of the more notorious consequences is that scenes
frequently either are added or extended beyond what is reasonable simply to give
exposure to an up-and-coming performer. Last year, both Corinne Bailey Rae and
Amos Lee benefited immensely from this practice, though the programs in which
their work appeared had a tendency to suffer because their songs became a
distraction that pulled the viewer out of the unfolding drama.
Although it hasn’t faced anything nearly as blatant, Friday Night Lights
has not been left untouched by this frustratingly prevalent advertising
phenomenon. Its soundtrack has found room for everything from rapper Jibbs’
Big Big Kid to Whiskeytown’s Everything I Do and from the operatic
roar of ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead’s So Divided to Jose
Gonzalez’s pensively moody Storms. Other intriguing selections have
included Dead Man’s Will, a haunting collaboration between Calexico and
Iron & Wine, and Drive-By Truckers’ somber Goodbye.
All things considered, Friday Night Lights has featured a rather good
slate of music. The only real revelation on the resulting soundtrack album,
however, is Tony Lucca’s picture-perfect reworking of Daniel Johnston’s Devil
Town. Johnston would have hated it, of course. Yet, there’s no denying how
well Lucca (with the help of Conor Oberst, whose arrangement he
essentially copped) transformed the tune from its original lo-fi recording into something
that is palatable without losing touch with the pain and anguish of Johnston’s
perceptively honest perspective. Although the soundtrack to Friday Night
Lights provides a solid survey of the current alterative and indie rock
scenes, Devil Town is the one song that actually fits seamlessly into the
framework of the program.
In the end, one has to worry that, despite its being the best show on
television, Friday Night Lights’ chances for extension beyond its second
season very well may boil down to the success of its soundtrack. Irresponsibly
ignored by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and improperly marketed
by NBC, the program has struggled to find an audience. It desperately needs a
break, but it’s running out of chances to get one. For all of the care that has
gone into framing the implications of each plot point and each scene, Friday
Night Lights’ only weakness remains its creators’ inconsistency at tying the
music directly to the drama taking place on the screen. Sometimes things fit.
Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, a more traditional orchestral score would have
fared better. One gets the sense that mastermind Peter Berg knows this, but if
the soundtrack is what ultimately draws viewers to the show, one also has to
hope against hope that the network heads who decide the program’s fate won’t
work even harder to jam ill-fitting songs into its scenes simply to sell another
line of products. After all, Friday Night Lights is not The O.C.,
rather it is a work of art that ought to live and die on its own merits. 
Friday Night Lights: Original Television Soundtrack is available
from Amazon.com. To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
Click Here!
For UK orders, please
Click Here!
Friday Night Lights: The Complete First Season is available
from Amazon.com. To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
Click Here!
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2007 The Music Box
|
