Songs in the Key of A

Missed blogging last week for a number of different reasons - one of them being a busy schedule, another being that the subject I wanted to blog about just didn't seem relevant at the time.

Since I blogged about games regardless of whether they'd tie into the movie or not, I wanted to delve into another aspect of movie marketing: The soundtrack. I also wanted to cover the music of the Avengers outside of the movie, but like I said, it just wasn't a timely topic.

Then a few days later, as if the universe took a cue from my mind, something magical happened.

Yep, Soundgarden is doing a new song for the movie, but I don't really know anything about Soundgarden - their songs and who they are, so that's not really what excites me about the whole thing. Soundgarden fans are gonna be happy though as this is apparently their first song in 15 years, but for me it's just the whole exercise of having a soundtrack with a new song, which I'm sure will be coupled with a music video! It just gives me something to look forward to!

Then came the announcement that there are definitely gonna be two albums tying into the movie: the compilation "Avengers Assemble: Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture" and the motion picture soundtrack featuring Alan Silvestri's score!

It's clear that they're milking the franchise for all that it's worth but whatever! I'm buying into it anyway! I haven't been this excited about a soundtrack in years, and probably for all the wrong reasons because I'm not really a fan of the very few artists I recognize from the track list:

Most of my favorite music growing up were from soundtrack compilations (Romeo + Juliet, Space Jam, Set It Off, the Joel Schumacher Batman movies quickly come to mind) and either I knew only a few songs (mainly because they released it prior to the movie) or only a few of the artists. But I enjoyed the albums anyway - I loved discovering new artists and new songs. In a way, getting soundtrack compilations is like getting an Avengers comic - I get a bit of everybody in one take, which I guess is a thing with me.

As for the movie score, I'm sure Alan Silvestri will do great, though I'm going to skip looking through the track list (online or IRL) until I watch the movie as those things tend to reveal too much and I still want to be shocked and surprised.

With all these songs and scores, I do hope they come up with a definitive tune for the Avengers. For the longest time, all we had was this one from the 90s animated series:

I remember that I had to use a MIDI of the X-men cartoon theme for a PowerPoint presentation about the Avengers I did for computer class back in college. This was around 2002, mind you, and while I knew the opening music above existed, it wasn't popular enough for someone on the Internet to do a MIDI of it (which was the only music I could find and download at the time).

With the new show, the Avengers also got a new theme song courtesy of Bad City.

When I first heard it, I was like "WTF were they thinking?" But, just like many fans of the show and the Avengers in general, the song quickly grew on me. I actually want to get my hands on the full version of the song, which I hope they release once they wrap up season 2! At the very least, they can include the song as a special feature on the DVD when they release it!

Speaking of DVDs, I love Guy Michelmore's score for the Ultimate Avengers and Ultimate Avengers 2. The soundtracks were available for purchase and thankfully I managed to secure a copy of both before the Disney take over of Marvel made Michelmore's work a little bit harder to find. I'm still looking to get a copy of his soundtrack for Next Avengers, which is just as amazing.

If I were to graduate from the PowerPoint of 10 years ago and do a video tribute to the Avengers, I would probably use Michelmore's scores if only because they're rousing enough to compete with the one from Justice League Unlimited:

I guess I'll have to wait and see what Soundgarden and Silvestri come up with. In the meantime, there's this ad for the Hasbro toys that features a cool track that I also wouldn't mind getting the full version of.

UPDATE:
The track listing and samples of Silvestri's score have been released.
Not gonna look at it for fear of spoilers though.