Nobody Can Tell Ya There's Only One Song
Mama Cass Elliot - Make Your Own Kind of Music.
Holy mother of music supervision. I'm not sure who the brainiac was that decided to use this during that amazing opening sequence of Lost last night, but it worked out perfectly. Somehow, someone over there at ABC cracked into my head and decided to show me everything I wanted to see -- I mean, how else could they have decided to go with a sweet-ass 70s set with huge computers running on magnetic tape, leatherette benches and wood paneling? Terminals with green monitors? Check. Geodesic Domes (like those in Sci-Fi hippie classic silent running)? You betcha. It was awesome.
As for the song -- it's late 60s pop perfection. Uptempo, rousing chorus, great beat. It's a perfect song for the morning. It wastes little time getting to the explosion of the chorus, which makes up the meat of the song. It's beautiful. I wish more songs were like this.
We can also use this as an entry point to talk about the frugal use of music on a show like this. There have been very few actual songs used on Lost -- off the top of my head all I remember is Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" used in the finale, but I'm sure there were others. But when the show has a score and not a soundtrack, a song like this is jarring and stands out in a truly wonderful way. No one watching that first three minutes last night knew what was going on -- it could've been a flashback, a flash foward, a dream sequence, or even a commercial for something else entirely. It wasn't until the explosion when the record stops that we're pulled into the weird reality of what's actually going on.
Anyway, I don't want to go all fan boy on you -- but you should go check out Flight 815. It's run by robot friend Lemon Red, and kevin bacon relation Jon Caramanica, who wrote a piece about the robots in SPIN magazine about a year ago. Anyway, go get your conspiracy on.