Music Seen: Music-to-Picture Hot Picks * Curious Pair by Debate Team
Artist: Debate Team
We can see "Curious Pair" pairing up nicely with a communicative commercial.
Song: Curious Pair
Why I Luv It: Remember the 1990s? I do. Vaguely.
One of the things that separates it from now musically is the deep divide between “pop” music that charts and sells and indie bands who write and produce their own music. Save for a few acts that manage to break through, such as The Strokes or Kings of Leon, most music that sells and sells well is glossy, well-produced dance pop hand-delivered to you by an adorable tween.
Gone are the halcyon days of cities that represented small pockets of rock music: Seattle, Austin, Portland, Chapel Hill, the list goes on. One of the genre victims of the death of this trend was power pop. Simple, straight-forward, catchy, pop rock which virtually dominated the 1990s in college charts AND the radio.
So that must mean that Debate Team are either creepers in their mid-40s preying upon this memory (read: Rascal Flatts) or kiddies too young to even remember its existence (read: everyone else). No, the Los Angeles five-piece fall right in between those two categories on their debut EP Debate Team Wins Again.
Sharing members with OK GO, The Hush Sound and OneRepublic, the band has power pop pulsing through its veins and clearly has the formula down for hits. Strongly recalling the underrated Fountains of Wayne or a far less ironic/irritating version of Weezer, Debate Team has revived the genre with hook-filled defibrillators.
Obvious single “Curious Pair” is an insanely catchy pop confection with witty, nursery rhyme-y lyrics that bring to mind elder Canadian poppers Sloan and could very easily be placed in spots across the board.
Scene I Can See It In: The lyrics of the song tell a story about meeting someone on the street who is so similar to you that it’s almost frightening. While at first the narrator is taken aback, it ends up being the one thing that brought these people together.
“For my entire life I thought I was the only one, I thought I was unique
But little did I know that somewhere out there in the world there was another me”
This is exactly what technology companies constantly strive for: “What does your phone/media player say about YOU??” These days with Apple’s dominance of the market, people are less concerned with what their devices say about them and just want to be part of a shared global experience.
I could see this song being used in a spot for another brand’s competing device. “Don’t be part of the herd! Think outside of the box! Be unique!” Most of the lyrics are slightly too specific, but an instrumental version with just a few choice phrases kept in could easily get this across.
“What would it take to make you see that I’m not the only me?”
The device catches on one person at a time as its owners meet other like-minded people because of the product. The shimmering introductory guitars set the stage for separated friends or loved ones, longing for one another and staying in touch only because of their devices. A lonely soul messages someone at night as someone receives it, moments later it in the morning. Both happily stay in touch with the help of this technology and as they go about their day, they encounter more and more people using the very same technology, creating a new shared experience for everyone.
As the spot continues, we get to larger and larger places with more people all of whom are using the device and noticing each other. By the final grand sweep of the song, we pull out of a huge arena during a concert where thousands of them are lit up and held in the air.
The angelic coo’s in the background help take us into outer space where millions of lights now shine all over the planet. While this moment was an impossibility in the 1990s, we can still use its musical influences to soundtrack the shared experiences of today.
Chris Tarantino is a Music Supervisor at Thwak! Music in NYC, a writer for The Village Voice & host of his own radio show on East Village Radio.