"...this song...will change your life"

You won't find me talking about music much. I love music as much as the next guy, but I know what I like, and I generally stick to it. I'm not one that is always searching out the latest artists, underground or major label types. I actually find myself directed to new music more often than finding it myself. Most of my life has been like that, with one person in particular introducing me to a lot of what I love today.

I find that my favorite music isn't always just about the beats or arrangement or genre, but the lyrics. As I love a movie, book, play, or television that tells a great story, I love songs that do as well. Music, though, just as often tells the story of a single moment rather than of a collection of them. Instead of characterization and plot, it tells the story of an emotion, or a sense even. I think there is as much to be found in a moment as anything else.

What I love even more, is when a filmmaker or television director that use these songs to help tell us their story. Zach Snyder goes overboard with it in the Watchmen, but each song reflects specifically on the scene it plays against. There are television shows that use popular music brilliantly, Life and Bones in particular stand out (I should note that I really refer to songs, and not necessarily the score, as I don't think I can speak with any level of authority on that type of music).

The one experience that will always stand out to me as the best use of music is the Garden State Soundtrack. The music used is so critical to the story being told, that it actually becomes part of the story. When the two main characters have their 'meet-cute' moment, Sam puts her headphones on Andrew and introduces him to the Shins, telling him that this song "...will change your life." I don't know if 'New Slang' changes Andrew's life as much as meeting Sam does, but the soundtrack opened my ears to music I would have never heard before. Colin Hay, the Shins, and Iron and Wine in particular, but there's not a song on that soundtrack that doesn't instantly bring me back to that movie, and the sense of opening doors and freedom that Andrew experienced.

More people should use Garden State as a way of handling music. There's also a couple of people I should thank for the soundtrack. You know who you are (Yes, Zach Braff, I'm talking to you, and, you know, other people, too).