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

And we’re back! Just as the last ‘proper’ instalment of this series promised that we would be, er, 18 months ago. Believe it or not, I do have a plan, of sorts, for these things, but although I always had an intention to do more, and a shortlist of other games to cover, it’s taken a while to get around to it, for some reason.

Anyway, let’s call this the start of Season 2, if this was TV, and I was American. Which it isn’t, and I’m not.

Today’s game is Test Drive Unlimited, a rather fab open-world racer that was the first 00s effort to really dial into what the original Test Drive and Need for Speed games were all about.

As is appropriate for a 00s free-roaming driving game, there is an option to listen to your own MP3s as a custom radio station, although from memory it involved having to copy the files into a particular directory in a way that seemed like a bit of a pain in the arse, and I got no further than lazily grabbing a few at random to see if it worked.

Eventually, repetition of this erratic compilation became more annoying than listening to one of the game’s own radio stations, even though they only have a handful of songs each, and unless you actively switch between them, you’ll be listening to those same songs for the next 50 hours or so. [Insert a joke here about commercial radio stations?!? It’d be really funny!! – Ed.]

Which, personally, I don’t mind in a game, when songs largely fade into the background unless they happen to be spectacularly annoying, in which case there remains a decent chance that you eventually still form a Stockholm Syndrome style bond with them anyway.

The deep pockets of the likes of EA does mean they can stretch to soundtracks that, no matter how much you may or may not like them, do seem to have been curated with some kind of overall sound or vibe in mind. Whereas games with lower budgets seem slightly more cobbled together.

Test Drive Unlimited definitely makes use of lower profile bands and songs, with lots of tracks that sound and seem vaguely familiar but which you almost definitely have not heard before. It sort of fits with the slightly unnatural feel of the game, which looks like real life but is a version of the world in which all people do all day is drive around in supercars and give lifts to models in exchange for clothing vouchers. In that reality, it seems plausible that the accompanying music is also incredibly popular, a bit like when you go on holiday in Europe and find some random song has become a massive hit there.
 

Alpinestars (featuring Brian Molko) – Carbon Kid
(Warner Chappell, 2002)

What happened to Placebo? Is a question that hasn’t occurred to me until just now. [Checks Wikipedia] Apparently they’re still going, although without an official drummer. They were pretty good in the 90s, though: in the days when everyone watched Top of the Pops, I still remember the sight of Placebo playing Nancy Boy as one of those interesting and eye-opening moments where vaguely subversive singles would occasionally punctuate the miming of boybands and pop acts.

I’ve never heard of Alpinestars, who had disbanded by the time this game came out, and are apparently nothing to do with the motorsports clothing company of the same name. But this song is pretty good, seemingly referencing Placebo’s 1998 banger Pure Morning, with a good whistle-y synth solo in the middle and slightly bonkers lyrics into the bargain. (Although apparently Molko isn’t singing about a ‘sinister diaphragm’ as I incorrectly thought, despite having heard the song roughly a million times).
 

Metric – Handshakes
(Chrysalis, 2005)

“Buy this car to drive to work, drive to work to pay for this car” may be a reasonable summary of the circular and self-defeating nature of capitalism, but they are strange lyrics to accompany a game in which your preening avatar is able to pay for his or her starting motor, worth $40k, in cash and then spends the rest of the time twatting about on Hawaii in pursuit of more cars, houses and designer clothes.

It’s a good tune, although Metric are largely unknown and unheralded in this country, and this wasn’t a single by the looks of things. A Google of the album from which it was taken, Live It Out, brings up a typically bitchy 00s Pitchfork review in which the author seems insistent that the lead singer should leave the band to pursue a solo career.
 

Clearlake – Finally Free
(Chrysalis, 2006)

Finally Free is, in my mind, the theme tune for Test Drive Unlimited, in that its lyrics espouse the benefits of freeform open-world driving, and casting off the past constraints of invisible walls, dull laps, and repetitive career structures.

Not really. But it is a good, laid-back driving tune. I initially got the band, Clearlake, who are from Brighton, mixed up with Everclear, who are not. (Also, I think I also get Everclear mixed up with Grandaddy for some reason [are you sure you never wrote for the NME? – Ed.])

Anyway, I’m not sure Finally Free was ever a single, but over the course of this game I came to the view that if it had been repeated several times a day on Radio 1 it might well have been a hit. Perhaps it is all luck and politics then. Probably.
 

Howie B – Angels Go Bald: Too
(Sony/ATV, 1997)

Ah, now this one, I had heard of. A number 36 hit in the UK in July 1997! Those were the days, when I was young and everything was better (etc.) It’s a big beat techno instrumental entirely of its time, calling to mind the likes of Future Sound of London’s We Have Explosive, and I would definitely have tried to buy the single if I’d seen it in the local Woolworths bargain bin.

Around this time Howie B was also known for his work with U2 on their best/worst album Pop. I know he’s probably biased, but I was pleased to hear him sticking up for the album, and specifically the song Miami, which many (wrongly) claim to be terrible, in this 2018 interview.

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And that’s it. This selection is skewed a bit by the fact I left the in-game station tuned to Radio Bot (rock) most of the time. Some of Bot’s other tunes are also good, but also produced by now-defunct British and Irish 00s indie bands, about which further information is limited.

Right. Expect more Soundtracks soon, that’s an FFG guarantee! (Subject to terms and conditions).