[Article] Chasing stars - Breaking America

AS MANY OBSERVERS HAVE NOTED of late, the slow invasion of British bands into the hearts and minds of Americans is finally gaining momentum. The last year has seen a wealth of homegrown stars crash into the Billboard top 30's hallowed grounds, including Arctic Monkeys, Snow Patrol, James Blunt and, most recently, Amy Winehouse, whose Back in Black album achieved an impressive number seven placing in March. In the meantime, US indie internet chatrooms are buzzing with rave reviews of the recent Razorlight tour, their excitement no doubt fuelled by the appearance of frontman Johnny Borrell and his rippling biceps on the cover of this month's American Vogue.

If this suggests that the way to "break America" is to date Kirsten Dunst and pose on a Harley Davidson, the truth is that tackling the States remains a huge slog. For many bands it still means a souldestroying two-year tour around the toilet bowls of middle America doing ten radio interviews a day with Oklahoma's answer to Simon Bates. The toil nearly broke Oasis, and has finished off many of a more fragile nature. Last week Lily Allen postponed the second leg of her American tour, complaining that the country was "boring".

"Life is weird at the moment," Allen wrote in her blog. "Is it really important to break America? If it is I have to write my life off for the next nine months, playing the same gig, answering the same questions to different journalists."

However, for some lucky (or canny) bands, a possible shortcut to American success has emerged - a route involving much less back pain and fewer Taco Bells. At the recent South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, the most highly prized names on the bands' guestlist were not A&Rs, celebrity rock journalists or even TV show bookers; they were the music supervisors of primetime US TV dramas. Get the attention of Alex Patsavas, music supervisor for Grey's Anatomy and The OC, or ER's Ann Kline, and you may be well on the way to breaking the Billboard Top 10, as Snow Patrol did after Chasing Cars won the coveted "finale scene" slot in Grey's Anatomy (most observers credit this win with introducing Snow Patrol to the US so effectively). Similarly, Coldplay's huge success in the States is linked to the use of Trouble during another finale in Without a Trace, Fix You backing a dramatic heart attack scene in The OC, and Clocks' slot on ER.

Of course it's nothing new for a band's introduction to the American public to come via TV drama. Dawson's Creek did it for millions of teenagers in the late 1990s, ER has been doing it even longer. What has made a difference more recently is the "instant download" factor offered by the likes of iTunes. This means that a song's appearance on a show such as Grey's Anatomy (US audience: 27 million) can result in an immediate sales return.

The development has revolutionised the industry, and made the music supervisor king in the land of new bands with big ambitions. Patsavas, now one of the "100 most powerful people in South California", according to the LA Times, recently announced that she was launching her own label, Chop Shop Records, with the support of a major label, Atlantic.

So how do you impress these music supervisors? Not easily. Patsavas describes herself as having "a real innate total love of music that stretches back many years" and which covers everything from "1930s burlesque to 1980s heavy metal". She warns that trying to get her attention by sending "envelopes full of glitter and other gimmicks" is a bad idea. As is any suggestion that you might have written a track with thoughts of having it employed on a TV drama.

"The minute a band is trying to write a song to get it on TV they've already lost," she says. "I just want to hear what the band think is the best song they could write."

Gary Calamar is music supervisor for Weeds and filled the role for the now deceased Six Feet Under. Like Patsavas, he is a genuine music fanatic who, before he worked in TV, "worked in record stores, managed bands, worked the door at clubs". He now teaches a class on music supervision at UCLA and is thus well placed to convey exactly what he's looking for when faced with the kind of high impact scene that aims to lodge itself - and its musical accompaniment - in the brain of the viewer long after transmission.

"Getting an emotional response from the viewer is the number one priority," Calamar says. "Sometimes it's very subliminal. Generally in Six Feet Under the music was subtle and quiet but created a texture or a thread or a mood. It was rarely overbearing - and often we didn't use the vocal."

Not all bands, it should be said, are happy about letting an often deeply personal song on to a scene depicting an entirely unrelated event. "That can't be my worry or else I'd lose my job," says Calamar, but he admits it's something he's come up against. "Will Oldham [aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy] was very particular about how his song was used," Calamar says of the alt.country figurehead. "He watched the scene then stipulated that we could only use his song if it had absolutely no dialogue over it. Which was impossible. So it didn't happen."

However, KT Tunstall, whose paean to Patti Smith, Suddenly I See, showed up in Ugly Betty, and Chris Martin, who allegedly wrote Fix You offering hope to his wife Gwyneth Paltrow upon the death of her father, evidently managed to surrender the meaning of their songs to the greater televisual good without quite the same internal struggle.

For bands hoping to test the waters via British TV drama, the differences between the two countries' approach is so vast it almost makes comparison useless. British viewers familiar with ER, Grey's Anatomy or Without a Trace will have noticed that their local counterparts display a relative lack of awareness about how the right track can transform a scene, turning a mildly involved viewer into an immersed witness. While those American shows have made monster hits out of the tunes that accompany pivotal scenes and dramatically climactic show finales, the ambitions of their UK cousins seem tiny in comparison, as if conjuring up too much feeling or manipulating the audience quite so mercilessly just isn't a British thing to do.

It's no surprise, then, that while the music supervisor is a serious and valued member of the crew in US drama, in British TV the equivalent role does not actually exist. On those few dramas that do use commercially available music the process tends to be a collaboration between producer, director, exec or other "interested" parties (ie anyone who might know anything about music).

Sue de Beauvoir, producer on BBC1's Waterloo Road, admits she "doesn't have a huge knowledge of music" but oversaw the music policy on the show because she is a fan of contemporary British bands such as the Libertines, Athlete and Howling Bells and was keen to exploit the energy and contemporary feel they could bring to the series. She believes that music has to complement on-screen action, seeing the role as enhancing the script rather than adding to it. This is a subtle difference, but one which may help to explain music's lesser role in most UK dramas.

"There are some tracks that will not work," she says. "Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse are hot at the moment but it was impossible to use their music. I did try with a Lily Allen track when someone was listening to a Walkman in the classroom but the lyrics were so specific, putting across a really strong message, there were hints of politics and also a bit of swearing so it was just impossible to use it."

Interestingly, Grey's Anatomy has actually utilised a number of Lily Allen tracks (which may have kickstarted the demand for US live dates in the first place).

But de Beauvoir does perhaps put her finger on what kind of music is easiest to sell to television. Let's call it the Snow Patrol syndrome.

"They have a subtle way of hitting the emotions," she says of the band who have soundtracked Grey's Anatomy, ER, Six Feet Under, Waterloo Road and even Match of the Day. "And they have such a broad appeal across all ages. Snow Patrol have that universal thing. They're good background music."

Not too specific, perhaps not too unique, broad in appeal, general in subject matter and prone to climactic melodramatic choruses - Snow Patrol may be the ultimate music supervisor's band.

But don't let them fool you - there are very few songwriters who can come up with something as all-embracing as Run or Chasing Cars. Try it - if you think you've cracked it, give Alex Patsavas a call.

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