If you ask a random stranger on the street about what the saddest song they’ve ever heard is… Well, they’re probably going to answer with something by Nickelback, Coldplay or Fallout Boy. But if you ask a random stranger on the street who is not an angsty teenager with horrible taste in music, chances are they’re going to respond with Johnny Cash’s Hurt. “Hurt”, a cover of an equally depressing Nine Inch Nails song, was the last thing Cash ever recorded, and is basically an ode to the life he has led and a lamentation that it will be ending soon (he passed away seven months after the music video was shot). His somber voice that sounds so at peace with the thought of death while also singing lyrics that attack it for taking everyone from his life away is enough to bring most people to tears… And yet despite being one of the most famous “depressing” songs out there, despite the fact that it has appeared in numerous movies and TV shows such as “Smallville”, “Criminal Minds” and “Person of Interest”, “Hurt” hasn’t quite reached that classic song status that other hits from the past have in our popular culture. You don’t hear it on the radio. You don’t really hear people reference it in conversations unless they’re specifically talking about songs that made them cry. It’s not going to appear in your suggested videos on YouTube, or as a Pandora recommendation.
Naturally, that all changed when the first trailer for “Logan” – a movie about a much older Wolverine that has to deal with an ailing body and the fact that he has outlasted all of the people in his life – made excellent use of “Hurt”, with many calling it one of the best trailer song choices of all time. The song was so effective in its context that people are already calling “Logan” the best superhero movie of 2017, despite the fact that the two previous movies starring Wolverine were pretty terrible. But it actually goes both ways – the trailer actually gave the song a massive boost, to the point where while just two months ago its music video on YouTube had 23 million views, while now it had over 29 million – and that’s without counting all of the individual uploads of the song, which have also received a massive boost. But that’s arbitrary data, really. Let’s look at something a little bit more concrete… Oh, I know! Remember back in 2014, when Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” was used in the trailer for “Guardians of the Galaxy” and arguably started this whole trend of using popular songs in trailers? Well, it actually gave “Hooked on a Feeling” its best week in sales ever, which is definitely saying something considering how popular the song was even without the boost that “Guardians” gave it. Other songs have experienced this too – “Bohemian Rhapsody”, one of the most popular songs of all time, was exposed to an entirely new generation thanks to its appearance in the “Suicide Squad” trailer. But it doesn’t just apply to trailers, oh, no. The most memorable sequence in this year’s “X-Men: Apocalypse” involved Quicksilver running at super-speed saving people to the tune of Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” – a song that literally nobody had paid any mind to since the 80s.
Superhero movies obviously have a huge sway over the young generation. They’re popular, and as such get to decide what else is popular. So I was thinking… What if a superhero movie used a reggae song in its trailer or soundtrack? Would that cause it to rise in the charts and perhaps result in a bit of a resurgence for the genre, especially among a younger audience? Obviously, not even I would want to hear reggae in Ben Affleck’s new “Batman” movie, but considering just how experimental these movies have been getting lately, I genuinely don’t see why reggae wouldn’t be the right soundtrack for one. We’ve reached a point in our culture where old musical styles which used to be really popular, but have lost relevance, can be brought back into the spotlight through media (like how “Hotline Miami” brought back 80s electronica), so when is reggae’s turn going to come?