Vampire Tunes

It surely is a good time to be a vampire these days. With the massive success of the Twilight series and True Blood, not to mention Cirque Du Freak and of course my favorite, The Vampire Diaries. While Twilight may receive all the credit for kicking off the vampire craze, The Vampire Diaries actually pre-dates the Twilight series by over a decade and I'm proud to say I read The Vampire Diaries before I devoured Twilight (and let's make no mistake here, I am a huge Twilight fan, with allegiances to Team Edward).

Anyway, The Vampire Diaries has now inspired a TV show, and last week's episode featured a couple great songs by some artists that should be familiar to those of you who regularly follow this blog. The first song, "Lies" is by Pablo Sebastian, he of Malbec fame. Pablo's familiar silky smooth vocals are still here, but this song is a little more rock/pop, a little less hip hop or electronic than Malbec. The song plays as Bonnie and Elena discuss Damon in the car. Unfortunately YouTube disabled embedding for these clips, but if you click below it will open a new window for you watch in.

Pablo Sebastian on MySpace

Great Northern's "Houses" also pops up in this episode as it continues to show that it may be one of the best songs to use in TV shows or movies ever. Having already played a feature role in 90210 earlier this year and just recently in One Tree Hill, "Houses" is used more as background ambience at the Mystic Grill as Jenna and Alaric talk, and then Damon and Stefan play darts.

Great Northern on MySpace

Great Northern Kick Off One Tree Hill

Any casual follower of this blog already knows how big of a fan of Great Northern I am, so you can imagine how excited I was to hear their song "Houses" play during the entire opening montage of last night's episode of One Tree Hill, "Your Cheatin' Heart."

The propulsive track, which appeared earlier this year in 90210, has that ever-present forward moving momentum, which makes it the perfect song to kick off an episode. Rachel Stolte's powerful, smokey vocals give an ethereal quality to this song, as the driving beats and bass line make sure you feel its presence. I think by the time 2009 is all said and done, Remind Me Where the Light Is will be my favorite record of the year, and "Houses" is definitely my favorite song off the album, so I'm happy to see it getting so much love, especially since One Tree Hill's music (which used to be absolutely phenomenal) has been going down hill lately.

For some reason, I can't embed the video, but if you click on the image below, you can watch the entire opening montage.

Great Northern on MySpace

The Hills Premieres With 2 Great Songs

Ah, The Hills. Some of my friends say it's everything that's wrong with TV these days, especially reality TV. Others swear by it, watching each and every episode multiple times per week. Me? I fall somewhere in the middle. Sometimes I get sucked way into it, but then sometimes a character will piss me off so much that I turn it off for a few weeks, but I always watch the season premieres and go from there. Besides, half the reason you watch a show like this is because many of the characters are such out of control drama queens that it makes you feel better about your own life. Last night kicked off another season of The Hills (can you believe we're at season 6?) so of course, I tuned in. Or rather, I recorded it and watched it later.

There are thousands of better episode reviews that you can find online, but since this is my blog, readers know the drill. I usually save postings for when I find a cool song on a TV show, and The Hills' season 6 premiere actually had 2 great tracks. The first, is "Warning" by modestComplexity favorites, Great Northern. "Warning" is off their latest album, Remind Me Where the Light Is, and if you ask me, should be the next single. It has great sing-a-long qualities, and the tune easily gets stuck in your head, without being annoying.

Great Northern on MySpace

Keri Hilson's "Turning Me On" was the second song I enjoyed. I had never heard of Keri prior to this episode, but after mistaking her song for a different artist, I stumbled upon Kari's music, which is some great, unpretentious pop with a dancey feel.

Keri Hilson on MySpace

Great Northern on Greek

It's no secret that I love the TV show Greek, or the band Great Northern, so you can imagine how excited I was to hear Great Northern's "Telling Lies" in Monday's episode of Greek. I've been dealing with some icky computer problems lately (hence the long space in between posts), but I've finally got a clip of the scene up (see below). After the father/fraternity football game, they all go to Dobler's. Casey gets all the fathers to make up with each other, but Ashleigh still won't forgive Rebecca for kissing Fischer...and "Telling Lies" appropriately plays in the background.

Season three of Greek is just underway, and I'd like to think this is thanks to all my fellow Greek lovers who petitioned to keep the show on the air. I know I had read rumblings about it being a possible cancellation, and am glad to see ABC Family made the right choice in keeping it on the air, and so far the first two episodes have been great. I thought it was a pretty brilliant portrayal of a Father's weekend at a sorority - anybody that's ever been around one of these knows what I'm talking about here - and I can't wait to tune in next week to see if Casey can save the "undie run." (PS, sorry for the poor video quality. My TiVo was temporarily broken so I had to capture it from an online video)

Great Northern on MySpace

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

So before I get ahead of myself, I have to let you all know that I'm changing some things up here. Because of a combination of my way too crazy school schedule this term and the inconsistency of awesome music in pop culture, I've decided to get rid of the "Pop Culture Song of the Week" column, and just post about songs whenever I hear something awesome on TV, in a movie, or other places. Hopefully this will motivate me to actually write more often. Now that this little item of news is out of the way, I give you the "Pop Culture Song of the Moment" - "Houses" by Great Northern as heard in last night's episode of 90210, "Zero Tolerance."

With prom season being in the air, it was only fitting that last night's episode of 90210 would be prom-themed. In a tip of the cap to the original series, the episode was titled "Zero Tolerance" (if you haven't seen the original's classic prom episode, you gotta do that now!).  Anyway, I won't get too much into the details of the episode, other than that I love how they used Silver (again). She's such an awesome character, and her ranting Prom Queen acceptance (an award she turns down), where she talks about how she hates conformity and everything else that prom stands for, was awesome. 

As everyone arrives at the prom and all the photographers swarm for pictures on the red carpet, the forceful and confident song "Houses" by Great Northern plays. The driving drum beat and bass line really give this song a strong sense of urgency, which fits the controlled chaos of the scene well. I've blogged about this band before, and I've been listening to Remind Me Where the Light Is constantly since it was released two weeks ago. Check out the scene below (song starts about 15 seconds in).

Check out Great Northern at MySpace

Pop Culture Song of the Week

For this week's song, I'm going with "Driveway" by Great Northern, which aired at the end of last week's Grey's Anatomy episode. It's a haunting/beautiful song that totally gave me with the chills. The vocals are somber without sounding whiney...a very fine line to walk.

After some creative Googling, I found that this song isn't out yet, but will be featured on their upcoming album, Remind Me Where the Light Is. It is set for release on Aril 28th, hopefully iTunes has it earlier. Check out the scene below.