Soundtracks is where we take a look back at the use of licensed music in games. Go here if you want to know more.

Hello and welcome to Soundtracks. Today’s game is Burnout Paradise, a 2008 racer from Criterion that lots of people seem to like but which we found to be competent, but slightly clinical and unengaging, as these things go.

As an EA game, it does of course come with a lavish budget for a licensed soundtrack, including a theme tune of sorts, with Paradise City by Guns N’ Roses pumped into your ears at every available opportunity, accompanied at the outset by the inane utterances of in-game DJ, Atomika.

We’ll get to that, but in general the soundtrack here doesn’t quite have the same impact as in some of the previous racing games we’ve covered. It’s all much less ‘in your face’ than mid-00s Need for Speed, although perhaps that’s appropriate for a game that has no street racing angle and takes a more straightforward ‘race around in sunshine-land’ approach.

In fact, Guns N’ Roses excepted, it’s less of a case of loud tunes burning their way into your consciousness through sheer volume and repetition, and more one of occasionally being aware that a song you vaguely recognise is playing and wondering how and why exactly it managed to find its way into the game.
 

Guns N’ Roses – Paradise City
(Geffen, 1989)

In the UK (and the US, if the description on this clip is anything to go by), the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was accompanied by TV spots featuring Welcome to the Jungle by Guns N’ Roses. A game being advertised on TV was a pretty rare occurrence back then, but the ads themselves were spot on. Regardless of the merits of the song itself (my uncontroversial view: it rocks) it also speaks to the same setting and themes as the game itself.

I’d love to think this isn’t how the world works, but the use of Paradise City in Burnout Paradise makes me think that someone at EA just remembered this advert, thought that putting Guns N’ Roses in a game would be a good idea, spent about 10 seconds picking out another single from the same album, and then another 10 firing off an e-mail to Criterion to tell them what to call their game and the fake city featured within.

It may be sunny all the time in Paradise, with no pedestrians and everyone driving everywhere, but other than that, it’s not exactly similar to the city of Los Angeles as described by Axl et al in their song.

As I found to my cost when trying to do this at karaoke some years ago, between the memorable chorus refrains of Paradise City are some borderline incomprehensible fast rapping bits. It’s also a very long song, and the cynicism with which it seems to have been deployed here makes it feel even more so.
 

Depeche Mode – Route 66 (Beatmasters Mix)
(Mute, 1987)

I love bands with a long and interesting history that have managed to stay together through thick and thin and keep making music and touring because they’re still enjoying it. And although you potentially don’t get the same sense of excitement that you might have being part of a hardcore fanbase from the very beginning, I quite enjoy being able to dig back through a significant back catalogue having belatedly discovered an artist I liked.

(Plus there’s less potential for them to cause you feelings of intense betrayal and disappointment, although I maintain that your all-time favourite bands should kind of be like your football team: you make your choice when you’re young and stick with them from that point on, regardless of the quality of their output).

When I first got into Depeche Mode in the mid-late 90s, their future as a going concern was anything but certain, with constituent members seemingly all battling serious personal issues of some sort, and Alan Wilder choosing to leave the band altogether. The impact of the previous world tour meant that 1997 album Ultra was not even promoted through any schedule of live performances, save for a couple of short concerts around the time of release.

This one’s a comparative oldie, a cover and a remix, which featured as the B-side to 1988 single Behind the Wheel (which you might think could also have been used here) and features snippets of the A-side. It’s a curious thing indeed, although I certainly don’t mind it.

[RIP Andrew Fletcher: 1961-2022].
 

Avril Lavigne – Girlfriend
(RCA/Columbia, 2007)

Loath as I am to define a female artist by her relationships with men, I find it very hard to let the fact that Avril Lavigne has been married to both Deryck Whibley and Chad Kroeger pass without comment. The first one sort of makes sense, in a 00s Canadian pop-punk-royalty type way, but I cannot wrap my head around the second.

I don’t know why… Chad Kroeger might be a really nice bloke, but I guess I just can’t imagine anyone being married to him. And even Avril isn’t any more. (Oh, apparently they did a song together called ‘Let Me Go’ [insert your own joke here]).

I will go into bat for some Avril songs – I’m With You and My Happy Ending, for example (as mentioned last time I clearly have an affinity for extremely OTT, overwrought and emotional pop singles) – but the similarity to Mickey by Tony Basil makes this one a bit too clappy and twee for my liking. Girlfriend is unfortunately the kind of song that some indie band might well have thought was funny to cover on the Radio 1 Live Lounge.
 

The Pigeon Detectives – I’m Not Sorry
(Dance to the Radio/V2, 2007)

And the Pigeon Detectives are the kind of indie band who might think it was funny to do a cover of Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne on the Radio 1 Live Lounge, not realising that the result does no favours to either song or artist. (Although there are some who proclaim 00s Radio 1 Live Lounge covers to be the death of music, I think it was a fun enough idea which produced some good results as well as bad ones – but there are lots of bad ones).

Apparently, the appropriate term for mid-ranking 00s British guitar music is ‘Landfill Indie’ – the kind of term coined by music journalists to instantly reduce the work and artistic output of hundreds of individuals to little more than a sneer. A couple of years ago Vice (the likely real-world inspiration for Nathan Barley’s Sugar Ape magazine) attracted some attention with an article entitled ‘The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time’, in which various contributors take it turns to say, ‘this is shit, obviously, but I also kind of liked it, yeah?’

Unsurprisingly, The Pigeon Detectives are on that list; and, perhaps, just as unsurprisingly, it was at this point of writing this article that I realised I’d mixed them up with Scouting for Girls. Which probably explains why I don’t really mind this song, while to this day the sound of the latter’s once-ubiquitous She’s So Lovely causes an involuntary twitch.
 

Faith No More – Epic
(Slash, 1990)

I know there’s no point speculating, really, because the real reason is probably fairly mundane and contractual, but why is this hit single from 1990 on this soundtrack? Faith No More reunited in the 00s sometime for a tour – is that it? [Checks Wikipedia] No! That was in 2009! [Stop overthinking this – FFG reader].

I guess there’s some other early 90s US rock on there – Jane’s Addiction, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden… I mean, I’m not complaining or anything, but… right, fine, people can get into bands at any time, whatever. I mean, I only started listening to Faith No More in the late 00s, so I get it, I guess.

In fact, their singles collection was kind of my soundtrack (Soundtrack) to a friend’s wedding. Not that it was played at any point during the reception (or ceremony): more that some hours earlier the CD had been spinning in my car stereo during a panicky (and slightly too speedy) drive to the train station, with my self-inflicted tardiness creating the all-too-real possibility that I might actually be late for the bloody thing, at which my wife was acting as a bridesmaid.

I made it, in the end, although in a somewhat sweaty and dishevelled state, which was compounded when I attempted to casually reach into the pockets of my new suit jacket and realised that they were still sewn up.

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Look, I know what you’re thinking: this guy knows a lot about music. But don’t worry, I’m not about to go off and write about the latest pop CDs for Select Magazine!

(On a more serious note, the list of planned games (and songs) is thinning out a bit, so this series is probably going to come to a close soon. There’ll be a double-feature, and a ‘Best Of’ finale, and that’ll probably be it for the time being.)