Following my post about playing Goldfinger a few minutes after the Bond movie let out so’s some folks would hear it on the way home and, we hoped, be getting an extra little shot of feel-good juice from our station. Here’s how such a thing can be done today. Take The Sopranos. Season Five, in the opening segment something happens, Tony is pissed, slams the car door and takes off up the driveway. And out blasts “Heaven Only Knows” a solid Country rocker from Emmylou Harris. Now, the single wasn’t a big hit. Only got into the Top 20 in ’89. The Sopranos episode first aired fifteen years later. I moved it into a hot rotation for a few weeks after that episode first aired. The series, of course is iconic and continues to draw viewers today and I still schedule it in a Light Gold rotation. One could take something from The Sopranos for just about any format. Rock, Salsa, Classical. Here’s a list that shows every song used in every episode of the series. If you found something that fits your format, maybe the one that was on Tony’s soundtrack would pump just a bit more juice into your music mix than the ordinary Oldie would.
Here’s an up-to-date usage of the idea. HBO has another solid hit mini-series with “Big Little Lies” that made prominent use of The Temptations classic “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” in all the advance promos and trailers and was the background music for an extended seies of scenes at the end of Episode Six when some heavy shit was coming down. If I were programming an Oldies station this winter and spring, I’d have that one moved into Power Gold until at least the first of June.
I’ve always paid attention to the music used in movies and on tv, especially the music in the Hit shows. Whenever I hear something that is in my format, I pump up the spins on the station.
