A New Definition for 'Music Television'
I don't really listen to anything but talk on the radio anymore. I don't have XM. And no one's made me a "mix tape" in years.
Where's a modern girl supposed to find new music?
For a long time, I didn't have an answer to that question. I rarely discovered new music, and when I did it was usually by accident.
Let's just say I listened to a lot of retro-'80s.
But - all hail technology - that's all changed. Two of my favorite media, television and the Internet, have suddenly converged to solve my problems.
It helps that I enjoy shows targeted at the young hipsters - trashy pieces of brain candy like MTV's "The Hills" and the CW's "One Tree Hill."
But even fans of more respectable network shows like "Grey's Anatomy" can benefit from this trend.
Over the past few years, producers of many top television shows have become pretty savvy at choosing background music.
Ever notice how a heart-wrenching, emotional scene between Derek and Meredith always features just the right mournful piano ballad with just the right mournful lyrics?
In the past, if you noticed the song at all, you might have thought, "Wow. What a great song. Wonder what it is?" Thirty seconds later, you would have forgotten all about it because such questions had no easy answers, short of humming the song to every musically literate person you knew.
But the Internet - and music sites like iTunes, specifically - have provided an easy answer.
The official Web sites for nearly every show that employs hip music are now listing the songs' titles and artists in an easy-to-follow, episode-by-episode list.
Many of them are taking it one step further, providing a link that takes you - and your credit card - straight to iTunes to purchase the song.
So for example, if a tune caught your ear during "The Becoming," last week's episode of "Grey's," a simple visit to abc.com would have taken you right to it.
The "Grey's Anatomy" page lists "music guide" as one of its options. Click on that, and you'll find a list of every song played in every episode since Season 1.
The setup is pretty good for the artists, too. Keep in mind that "Grey's" pretty much launched The Fray's U.S. career by including "How to Save a Life" prominently during Season 2.
The best show for discovering new music, though, has to be "The Hills" on MTV.
If you can stand Lauren and Heidi's histrionics for 30 minutes, you'll come to appreciate that the music editors at MTV know their stuff and pack each episode with some of the most cutting-edge and appealing music out there. "The Hills'" Web site on MTV.com also lists each song, episode-by-episode. Plus, the site not only offers a small sample of the song, it also describes the scene in which the song was playing.
The most recent episode featured songs from artists like Good Charlotte and Missy Higgins and the new single from Simple Plan.
This season, "The Hills" has taken the music placement one very helpful step further. Whenever a new song starts playing, an alert pops up in the corner of the screen revealing the "now playing" title and artist.
And since the MTV generation is accustomed to a bunch of stuff flashing around on the screen during programs, the feature is useful rather than intrusive.
It's also very helpful in the art of making the modern-day mix tape. Or playlist. Or whatever we're calling them now.
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What are you and your friends talking about at the water cooler? E-mail Denise Neil at dneil@wichitaeagle.com.
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© 2008, The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.).
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