Anybody watching BBC1 early Saturday evening would have witnessed a mesmerising display of passion and precision: stirring highs, gut-wrenching lows and a surprise victory by a veteran team whom some had written off but who have recently enjoyed a spectacular return to form.
By which I mean the closing montage screened after England's grimly predictable elimination by Portugal in Gelsenkirchen.
To my mind, the BBC's farewell-England montage is one of the unacknowledged highlights of any international football tournament. I love the editing-room wizardry, the way the action dips and soars in unison with the music, the speed at which the BBC team must have cut together those miserable missed penalties during the pundits' post mortem.While the pre-tournament songs are obliged to exude gung-ho optimism (or, in the case of Embrace, half-hearted wishful thinking), the one selected for the closing montage has a heavier burden to shoulder. With millions of dejected viewers slumped in their sofas, it's a kind of catharsis.
In 1996, when England's vanquisher was Germany, Cast's Walk Away was used and became a kind of funeral march for Britpop's golden age. In 2004 (Portugal again), the BBC missed a trick by not choosing Dry Your Eyes by the Streets, but the fans took matters into their own hands by singing "Dry your eyes, Becks." This year, if bookies had been taking bets, the favourites would surely have been those British bands - Coldplay, Keane, Snow Patrol, Athlete - whose ouevre is tailor-made to accompany shots of Steven Gerrard gazing dolefully at his boots. Instead, the honour went to the Pet Shop Boys' operatically depressive ballad Numb, from their Fundamental album.
Before Saturday I thought it was one of the album's weaker moments, but here it was perfect: the slow build soundtracking all the missed chances, the explosive chorus heralding the goals, the line "about to lose my mind" chiming with Rooney's red card, the final bleak descent into failure and the message of blank denial: "I don't want to think, I don't want to feel nothing, I just wanna be numb." Arsenal fan Chris Lowe did produce Ian Wright's 1993 single Do The Right Thing and at the end of every match the stadium PA plays a terrible rewrite of their hit Go West, but the Pet Shop Boys were a wonderfully improbable choice. Factor in the pre-match montage, which employed Joy Division's Atmosphere, and at least it was a good day for fans of superior '80s pop.
Numb's sudden appearance in the iTunes chart confirms that, as music videos decline in importance, montages are becoming a potent way to sell a tune. On US TV they have become essential to every season finale; the careers of Imogen Heap and Zero 7 vocalist Sia Furler were boosted incalculably by the use of their songs in closing montages for The OC and Six Feet Under respectively.
Months, or even years, of emotional engagement are poured into those three or four minutes. Even the most acclaimed music video of recent years, Johnny Cash's Hurt, was a montage of scenes from his life. We are drawn ever more strongly to retrospectives and epitaphs.
If you're in a band, never mind trying to write the official Euro 2008 song. Aim for the montage instead.
Source: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk
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