Driving Music for the Criminally Reckless

Or how the soundtrack for TRON Legacy became irrevocably associated with Need For Speed: World in my brain.

I like the movie TRON Legacy.

I felt Legacy delivered about the same level of cool visual imagery, excitement, and goofy pseudo-technical nonsense as the original movie did back in 1982.  While no instant classic, it was fun to watch for many reasons.

One of those reasons...

One of the main breaks with the old movie was the sound track.  Daft Punk‘s musical accompaniment was so good, and so integral to the movie that my mind barely registered that is was, or could even exist as, a separate thing.

Until I saw it on iTunes for seven dollars, which was a price point I could not resist.

Another Disney soundtrack in my collection

Jeff Bridges says about 20 words on the second track of album, but otherwise it is nothing but the music of Daft Punk.  For seven dollars it was a deal.  It has been a long time since the default price for an album was that low.

And, as timing would have it, I got the album just before I decided to download and Need for Speed: World.

I got into the game, started the album up in iTunes, and started playing.

And it was amazing.

It was like the magical sound track.  Whatever came on seemed to fit in with whatever I was doing at that moment.  If I was in a police chase or in a race or smashing through downtown or just sweeping through the hills, the music seemed just right.  It was more like the soundtrack for the game than the movie.

It's eerie, but don't worry about it... I'll drive

And now, of course, the game and the soundtrack are linked in my brain.  I cannot play one without thinking of the other.

Which isn’t a bad thing.

Have you ever had a strong musical association like that?

5 thoughts on “Driving Music for the Criminally Reckless”

  1. Wizardling

    I’m playing both the original TRON and TRON Legacy soundtracks as I play in Eve Online – very suitable music for internet spaceships :-)

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  3. Dril

    Oasis – Go Let It Out:

    I, for some reason, always associate it with WAR (and PvP in general) even thought it’s not very PvP-y at all (read: no random face-mashing of guitars and screaming/rumbling unintelligibly into the microphone whilst the drummer is, for all intents and purposes, dropping a lorry onto a drumkit.) No idea why.

    Gary Jules – Mad World:

    EVE. It just fits.

    The entirety of the second Kaiser Chiefs album:

    Tower Defense/Maul games in Warcraft 3.

    Proof – I Am Kloot

    It’s my dailies tune, along with Fuck You by Cee Lo.

    Music affects me a lot more than it should; it’s one reason why I still regard WAR fondly, since I can still hum the opening theme, as it just worked with the game. Same with WoW (I liked the pre-Cata soundtrack more, tbh, but the current one is still great) and why I couldn’t get into Rift, because the music was just there.

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  4. Tesh

    I still associate “Walking on Broken Glass” (Annie Lennox) with BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge. It was big at the time, and my local radio station would play it more than any other song, it seems. With the game’s soundtrack somewhat… lacking, radio filled in.

    Oh, and T:L is a great movie. Nothing all that profound, perhaps, but it’s very pretty and fits the TRON ethos, methinketh. Daft Punk’s score is excellent, and it stays in my playlist most days.

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