Music

[melannen]

carmarthen was doing a thing on Tumblr where people demonstrate how obsessed they are with Les Mis by playing a game where somebody says something random, and the next person has to link it to Les Mis somehow in less than six steps.

(I totally would have participated, except, well, Tumblr. So Tumblr that I can't even find her post to link to it here.)

ANYWAY. Along those lines, some years back, somebody (I've no idea who) said that their test for when they're too invested in a fandom is to pick some random songs from their collection, and if they can come up with a pairing (or vid idea) that matches every song, they are exactly the right level of invested. (If you come up with the same pairing for every song, you are probably too invested.)

It's been awhile since I posted one of those here! So here, have the songs that came up at random on my Songs For Sunny Days playlist while I was walking to the library this afternoon to pick up the copy of the Brick that just came in for me.



1. The Weather Girls - It's Raining Men - Okay somebody needs to do some sort of mashup with this and A Little Fall Of Rain. Call it Eponine's Happy Ending.
2. Yael Naim - New Soul - This is so very much a Fantine song. It even has the bit at the end where she comes back for Valjean!
3. Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight - This is on the soundtrack for that Valjean/Javert fic where Valjean's about to give himself up at Arras, but first he goes "fuck everything, for once I'm going to do something JUST FOR MYSELF" and finally seduces Javert with candlelight and wine. And Javert thinks he's getting fired in the morning, so he says "fuck everything, for once I'm going to do something JUST FOR MYSELF" and goes with it. (Does that fic exist? I don't think I've read it yet. Which kind of surprises me.)
4. McFadden & Whitehead - Ain't No Stopping Us Now - This one is pretty much a gimme. :P Although I am still waiting for a modern-day-in-America (or mid-20th-century even) Amis AU where they're militant civil rights activists (and none of them are White.)
5. Placebo - Every Me and Every You - Okay this song is mostly for fandoms that have canon AUs/reincarnation where the same doomed relationships keep happening but if I'm doing Les Mis, it's probably Grantaire singing to Enjolras. (And there's plenty of reincarnation fics - and probably enough e/R-as-universal-archetypes in canon - so it works pretty well.)
6. Train - Meet Virginia - Eponine, in a modern!AU, you pick who's singing. (Apparently a modern AU where Gavroche is a high-level political advisor. I LIKE THIS AU.)
7. Cher - Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves - TOTALLY MY JAVERT BACKSTORY FOREVER AND ALWAYS. :P
8. Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved - This would be just a totally generic soft-focus love story except for the mildly creepy stalky overtones. So I guess it's Marius/Cosette. (Or possibly Marius/Cosette/Eponine.)
9. Blues Traveler - Hook - Full of passion and eloquence, but utterly cynical and signifying nothing = Grantaire must be talking.
10. Modern English - I'll Stop The World And Melt With You - This could be any Les Mis pairing, really, but I'm leaning toward Amis - the idea that you have to stop the world to make time for a personal life...
11. Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood - GAVROCHE BB.
12. Live - I Walk The Line - Needs to be a Javert/Justice, Valjean/Mercy vid, but with the two of them intercut so you could read it as Javert/Valjean (this cover is even a tenor and baritone in duet...)
13. Fastball - Out Of My Head - oh god this would be incredibly easy to vid to e/R. Possibly even with movie footage that actually exists.
14. Monkees - Daydream Believer - A Javert/Valjean fluff AU. Obviously.
15. Cowboy Mouth - Jenny Says - Joly/Musichetta! Or possibly Joly/Musichetta/Bossuet, given the bad-luck gambling imagery at the end.
16. Citizen King - Better Days - This could fit half the cast, but given the theatrical imagery I almost want to give it to Patron-Minette.
17. Alannah Myles - Black Velvet - As much as I hate to give him a song, this is pretty clearly Fantine/Tholomyes.
18. Lit - I Am My Own Worst Enemy - Grantaire, before he met the Amis, when he was even worse off...
19. Bonnie Tyler - Holding Out For A Hero - ENJOLRAS/PATRIA.
20. Starship - We Built This City On Rock And Roll - Yeah I think all I need to do here is link to a picture.


Come play! Can you do this with your music collection (ETA: or best playlist) and your current best fandom(s)? (it doesn't have to be Les Mis. Honest. I am still capable of other things.)

Comments

[seekingferret]

I don't know what my current best fandom is... am I falling back into Star Wars fandom just because I'm marathonning the Fate of the Jedi books and I'm excited about the JJ movie? Is How I Met Your Mother still my favorite fandom because it's the one TV show on at the moment that I still won't miss for anything? Is it Fringe since it's the show I get most excited talking crazy theories about with people?

I'm too polyfannish to know what my current best fandom is, but I do know for certain thanks to tightpresent that I can play the random song game with the Sarah Connor Chronicles and come up with a vid idea for ANYTHING. My vids for the fest are going to be interesting, is all I'm saying.

[melannen]

For purposes of this game, your current best fandom is either 'any fandom you know you can win this game with' or 'any fandom you're afraid you could win this game with'.

If there's none that immediately spring to mind, you're probably safe at the moment, though you could try some of those and see if it works! :D Multiples are definitely possible. *edits post*

[thatyourefuse]

... Yeah, so I'm 6 for 6 so far.

/hides

[melannen]

Not entirely surprised by this result! :D

[sarken]

Hm. I don't think I can actually manage to do that with my current best fandom! I've been going through my iTunes library and trying desperately to put together a Dallas playlist or get some vid ideas, but the show and my music don't mix at all. However, now that the gauntlet has been throw down, I will hit "shuffle" and see how it goes...

[melannen]

You might have to go with a subset of your music to make it really workable, depending on your music in general - the playlist I was using was pretty much all rock/pop, so that instrumentals and Muppets and the Irish folk and so on didn't come up. (Using an existing playlist/genre subset/etc. isn't cheating, as long as you didn't preselect the songs just for the game. Something heavy on rock/pop is usually easiest.)

[sophia_sol]

hahahahaha I came to this post to respond and meanwhile the song that immediately starts playing in my shuffle is one I downloaded specifically because it reminds me of a Les Mis character...... (City And Colour - The Death of Me - Grantaire. This is entirely tumblr's fault, for the record.)

SO YEAH I might as well continue here.

2. Adam Lambert - Can't Let You Go - Valjean and his Cosette feels
3. Panic at the Disco - Nine in the Afternoon - oh no this is a distressingly cheerfully-calm song about the Amis and the revolution
4. Sweet Honey In The Rock - Silvie - obviously bb!Cosette being ordered to fetch water by Mme Thenardier, although the tone is entirely wrong
5. Rankin Family - Endless Seasons - Javert/the law, agh it even has significant references to stars!!!
6. Heather Dale - Light Of The North - look, it's a song about HOW WONDERFUL THIS ROYAL COUPLE ARE, obviously it's Enjolras/Patria
7. The Arkansas Traveler - Dixie's Land - replace "Dixie" with "France" and you've got the revolutionaries, at least for the chorus
8. Elvis Presley - A Little Less Conversation - hullo Courfeyrac! (also hullo the opposite of Bahorel! "All this aggravation ain't satisfactioning me" LIKE HELL, aggravation satisfactions him thoroughly!)
9. Peter, Paul & Mary - Sorrow - awww Valjean bb
10. Jesus Christ Superstar - Everything's Alright - this does't map onto any character or anything and in fact lots of it doesn't map in a lot of ways, but it still gives me Les Mis feels because the general idea is the sort of thing lots of people would probs be interested in singing to the Amis (eg Combeferre's mother who he doesn't think of in his speech at the barricade) but the Amis would never stand for it.

aaaand maybe I'd best just stop here because I COULD KEEP ON

(also, for the record, the reason I ORIGINALLY came by to comment was to say that alksdjfsdfd Holding Out For A Hero as Enjolras/Patria is SO SO SO SO PERFECT I CANNOT)

[melannen]

THEY ARE ALL ALWAYS AMAZINGLY PERFECT THAT'S WHY THIS GAME IS SO MUCH FUN.

...also hey, A Little Less Conversation is a song I've been trying to remember to add to my ace playlist! yay for the reminder. (I would have said that one is Enjolras/Anybody Attempting To Flirt With Enjolras, for the record. :P But it also works for Courfeyrac! Possibly Courfeyrac/Bahorel!)

And you're right, Everything's Alright would be interesting vidded over "Turning/Dog Eats Dog".

...Holding Out For A Hero was def. Enjolras/SOMEBODY, but I couldn't figure out who - Enjolras/Everyone? Enjolras/Victor Hugo? The Poor People of Paris/Revolution/Enjolras? And then I was like OH DUH CANON.

[siegeofangels]

FAVORITE GAME.

I can't do every song that comes up on shuffle for hockey (although I can tell you now I'm overinvested), but some highlights include:

1. Saffire - Middle Aged Blues Boogie as an hilariously perfect song for the Edmonton Oilers, who are clearly all about the young men.

2. MCR - Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back, definitely, as a vid about an injury-heavy, hard-fought, losing season. Blackhawks last year, maybe.

3. Eminem - The Real Slim Shady. I would pay actual money to see a vid of Sidney Crosby to this song, because it is the LEAST Sidney-Crosbyish song ever but it would so work. With that video of him and the kids' hockey thing where they're ALL wearing number 87 and swarming around him like an army of TINY SIDNEY CROSBIES, oh my god.

4. Alanis Morisette - You Oughta Know as a SPURNED GOALIE SONG. Maybe about the whole Vancouver situation, with, "Oh, we're going to trade Luongo and go with Cory Schneider! OH WAIT LUONGO'S PLAYING WELL LET'S KEEP HIM." :| I mean, I don't dislike Luongo! But goalies get pushed aside so easily and I have a lot of feelings about it.

I keep running into songs that I already have really strong mental vids for, either actual vids like Handlebars or just other fandom themes that I've already slotted them into.

But Sidney Crosby as Slim Shady, I need to keep that in mind.

[melannen]

Sidney Crosby as Slim Shady with tiny hockey people around him! awwwww.

...your hockey ideas seem to all be ACTUALLY ABOUT PLAYING HOCKEY rather than about people being in relationships with each other and/or having feelings. This both amazes and amuses me. :D

...and five of the songs on my list are ones I already have REALLY STRONG associations with from other fandoms, but if I'm in deep enough, I can persevere through that! (We Built This City On Rock And Roll will always be that Atlantis vid for me no matter what.)

[sarken]

Bonus points: Wasn't "You Oughta Know" actually about a hockey player?

[zana16]

*cries* You are evil and now I want to write dwarf songfic.

[melannen]

yessss. my evil plan is succeeding!

[stellar_dust]

Yeah so every song in the world is Supernatural for me right now GOD DAMMIT

If I get around to it I'm going to throw together a mix that is all songs that predate 1955-ish (because of recent events in show) - any suggestions?

And also one that is all overplayed 90s alt-pop, because seriously 8tracks, I have had it with overplayed 10s tracks on SPN mixes.

[stellar_dust]

(btw this is only possible because you reorganized my mp3s, thank you <3)

[melannen]

Again somehow not surprised!

...you need lots of old Delta blues about hoodoo and deals with the devil and kinky sex. (Actually I could probably do an SPN playlist that's all Delta blues.)

Also "He'd Have To Get Under" by Billy Murray as the Dean/Impala song! (I dunno, what subset of SPN are you mixing? As we are demonstrating, ANY SONG can be any fandom, especially one with that much canon.)

ETA: "To Morrow" is the song for time loop episode, but it's 1957. And I always meant to vid "Is That All There Is?" to Dean, but wow, it's a lot later than I thought. "The Thing" however is firmly before 1955. Ooh, "Be Prepared" by Lehrer is 1953! Also "Sixteen Tons (Sold My Soul To The Company Store)".

[carmarthen]

*cough cough* You could revive it again? http://carmarthen-the-fan.tumblr.com/tagged/six+degrees+of+les+miz

I am so bad at this kind of game, especially since my music library is roughly 90% classical, Irish trad with no lyrics, or musicals (I can't port musical songs to other fandoms). And a lot of the rest is languages I don't speak.

But okay, skipping over all that stuff:

1. Adele - "Rolling in the Deep" - Yeah, cliched as fuck for any angsty pairing, but Valjean/Javert could work. They certainly have enough scars.
2. The Pogues - "Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go" - Actually, strangely appropriate for the entire Les Miz canon.
3. S.J. Tucker - "Crystal Cave" - ...okay, I can't really paste pagan anything onto Les Miz. I told you I was bad at this game!
4. Julia Ecklar - "Legends" - Um, I guess space AUs are good for...all fandoms?
5. Eminem - "Cleaning Out My Closet"

I CAN'T DO THIS. AND I HAVE JUST ADMITTED TO HAVING EMINEM ON MY COMPUTER IN PUBLIC. *sob*

[melannen]

Half of mine was ACTUAL DISCO, you are not allowed to have shame, especially since you're the second person to admit to eminem. :P

"Legends" is all about THE BETRAYAL OF THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT. Modern!Les Amis play it when they need to get Combeferre in the mood to punch things! (Also it's full of Icarus and Apollo references! You could certainly *filk* it to Les Mis.)

...okay yes these ones are hard, now you have me wanting to not cheat and use ALL MY MUSIC instead of a subset of "Music that is singable" which is what I actually had on my mp3 player. I don't actually have a playlist with ALL The MUSIC, though.

If I go by "all the music on this computer" (which excludes all the instrumental jazz and all the celtic and non-american folk among other things), I get:

1. Trust by Sarah McLachlan (which is probably a Fantine song.)
2. Johnny Cash - Who's Gene Autry? (this is clearly Marius telling his kids about his dead friends. Although, uh, not very close.)
3. Alexander the Great by Bond (which is instrumental classical crossover by an electric string quartet. It does sound sort influenced by 19th century European folk music, though! And I'm sure Grantaire compared Enjolras to Alexander the Great at least once. You could do a disco!Amis dance vid to this, I bet.)
4. ....Slim Shady. I AM JEAN VALJEAN. ..okay moving on now.
5. Everything Changes from the Torchwood soundtrack clearly belongs with ellen_fremedon's crossover epic.
6. A techno remix of the Sesame Street theme, artist unknown. Look, there is a Rue Sesame in Paris, just like there is in every city in the world, if you know how to get there! And Grouches are really good at barricades. That's a fic that's crying out to written. (Which of the Amis would know how to get there, I wonder.)
7. Skies of Skaia from the first Homestuck album - NOPE NOT GOING THERE. (Could go there, choosing not to. :P)
8. An instrumental fiddle version of "I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow" - Valjean. Valjean in particularly melodramatic mood, but fair.
9. "Promenade:Gnomus " from Pictures at an Exhibition - darn, if it was two tracks down it would have been "Promenade: Tuileries". :p
10. and a live bluegrass mandolin medley by Chris Thile of Nickel Creek. Yeah okay, even I'm not sure where to go with that one.

Okay, I admit it, I didn't quite make it that time. :P

[zlabya]

I *love* your musical tastes. Lots of stuff I don't know, some where I know a little about the group, and what I know I really like--old Cher, Monkees, "We Built this City"--and I just had to smile over that art you linked.

I'm going to try it myself but I'm afraid for the "matching every song with the same pairing" situation...

[melannen]

I deny the accusation that I have any musical taste at all whatsoever. :P

I tend to find when I'm matching every song to the same pairing, I end up drifting... pretty far from any sort of firm canon basis of the pairing. Not that there's anything wrong with that! One-pairing fandoms tend to do that eventually anyway.

And the Disco Amis are one of my favorite things about Les Mis fandom on Tumblr. :D

[metanewsmods]

Hi, would it be okay to link this at metanews?

[melannen]

Sure!

[elspethdixon]

Most of the music on my computer is from fanmixes I've downloaded or fanmixes I've put together but never posted, and some of it is filk, so playing this game with my music folder is kind of like fanmixception.

[melannen]

So is a huge proportion of mine! ...which admittedly may be partly why this is so easy with my collection.

[lady_ganesh]

I'm gonna cheat and use your list. :D

Let's go with Saiyuki because NEW CHAPTER ANY MINUTE NOW OMG


1. The Weather Girls - It's Raining Men - All male cast extravaganza, narrated by Kanzeon.
2. Yael Naim - New Soul - Goku. Just. Lots of Goku.
3. Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight - Gonou and Gojyo, just before Gonou leaves with Sanzo. No one cares that it probably didn't happen in canon.
4. McFadden & Whitehead - Ain't No Stopping Us Now - Epic road trip vid! The ikkou on the move.
5. Placebo - Every Me and Every You - EASY with that canon reincarnation thing going on, all four of the ikkou and their younger self/earlier incarnations. More Kanzeon.
6. Train - Meet Virginia - Maybe that lady from early in Blast who keeps singing. Or the girl from very early on who keeps washing the laundry for her lost love.
7. Cher - Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves - I can't do this one without resorting to crack. Let's make it a ridiculous Kougaiji video, shall we?
8. Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved - Lirin and her brother. In a non-creepy way.
9. Blues Traveler - Hook - Nii talks a a lot. And it's all with inflection.
10. Modern English - I'll Stop The World And Melt With You - Terminally sappy Hakkai/Gojyo.
11. Gorillaz - Seiten Tasei owns this one. Finally someone let me out of my cage/Now time for me is nothin' cause I'm countin' no age.
12. Live - I Walk The Line - Gonou/Kanan, obvs. DOOM.
13. Fastball - Out Of My Head - Gonou owns this one too.
14. Monkees - Daydream Believer - Hmm, you could do this one a lot of ways. Let's go with cracky Gat/Hazel.
15. Cowboy Mouth - Jenny Says - Oh, God, Gojyo honey.
16. Citizen King - Better Days - And another Gojyo one, pre-Gonou.
17. Alannah Myles - Black Velvet - I think this is a Kouryouu one, actually, him stopping that bear in the rain.
18. Lit - I Am My Own Worst Enemy - HAHAHA EVERYONE but probably Gojyo would get the video.
19. Bonnie Tyler - Holding Out For A Hero - Innocent townspeople holding out for THE SANZO PARTY! Yeah, good luck with that.
20. Starship - We Built This City On Rock And Roll - Another crack video, maybe with the ikkou vs. Gat and Hazel.

[melannen]

I don't know who any of these people are but I approve of this list! :D