There are cool ways to learn about music, and uncool ones. Cool involves, you’re young, someone with a crush on you makes you a mix tape. Or you go see this band at an underground club that only lets in cool people.
Then there’s the opposite, which is when you’re watching a rerun on your laptop on the couch and think, huh, that’s actually a good song!
This, then, is a post about some of the finest music on my preferred television programs. I contextualize the songs within the episodes. It’s all extremely scholarly and highbrow.
The first in the lineup is The Traveling Wilburys, “The End of the Line.” It’s what plays in the final scene of the final ep of “One Foot in the Grave.” The song, as per Wikipedia, matches up lyrically to scenes from the episode, but that’s not all. It’s also Victor Meldrew, the end of the line. It’s also, also, that there’s something extremely funny about a laid-back song with the refrain, “It’s allllll right,” on a show about the world’s least chill man.
Oh and: it’s a song about forgiveness, which is an interesting choice in an episode where whether or not Margaret forgives the woman who killed Victor in a hit-and-run is never established.
Anyway I couldn’t get the song out of my head, so I looked up what it was, only to discover that this was apparently some post-Beatles band with George Harrison, Tom Petty, and all of the other rock stars of that era. A YouYube commenter says it’s like when the teacher puts all the smart kids together on a class project, which seems about right.
Readers of this blog know all about my love not just of “Benidorm” but specifically of season 2, episode 6. Janice does a karaoke version of Meat Loaf’s “Dead Ringer for Love,” dedicated to Mick, in honor of their 10th wedding anniversary, which Mick has forgotten. She knows he forgot, but forgives him.
Why does she do this? Presumably because, as readers are by now sick of hearing, Mick is swoon. Although in the universe of the show that is not the reason. It’s more that she feels guilty for having just made out with a 24-year-old admirer.
While I had certainly heard of Meat Loaf prior to seeing this episode for the first time, that song I didn’t know. It’s a fun one, and has Cher in the video. It’s also great in the ep because what better to sing for a spouse on your 10th anniversary than a song about the type of love that exists between people who’ve only ever seen each other at a bar and never interacted long enough to learn each other’s names.
For the third of three, a song that even I, under my rock of reruns, perfectly well knew long before noticing it in “Waiting for God” season 4 episode 4. Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” plays during the fashion show scene. It’s appropriately thirsty given the context: elderly lothario Basil lusting after the swimsuit-clad runway models, Diana reuniting with Tom, Jane watching Harvey and Geoffrey ‘wrestle.’
But isn’t that all everybody wants? To dance with somebody who loves them? Not everybody-everybody (that would be people who don’t want this because reasons erasure) but, you know.
Not many British sitcoms had memorable themes. Eric Idle's theme for One Foot in the Grave is unusual in that regard. Plus the Denis Waterman oeuvre: Minder being the most memorable! (I think anyone in the UK over 30 could sing along with "I could be so good for you ...").But the catchy theme with lyrics is rare.