Tie-In Songs Rant

Usually whenever a big film is coming out they have a tie-in song released by a famous pop artist and the two cross-promote each other, people buy the song and learn about the film, people buy the film and learn about the song, the actual practise itself I have no problem with, my problem is the lack of commitment the song has to the film. Some recent examples are 'I See Fire' by Ed Sheeran for Desolation of Smaug or 'All Of The Stars' by Ed Sheeran for The Fault in Our Stars or...okay so studios really seem to love Ed Sheeran. My point is, these songs don't really market the film the way they should. They're really more of in that area of "yeah it fits for the tone of the film but it's also vague enough that you can listen to it on the radio without knowing about the films existence". Why? Why bother making a tie-in song if you're not going to...tie it in! And no, the fact that both the song and the film have the word "stars" in the title is not actually tying in. Take for example Ghosbusters, you can't think of the song without thinking of the film and vice-versa. And if you think that making your tie-in song actually tie-in means it's going to cut out of a large portion of listeners who don't see the film, first of all: it's clearly failed to do its job then if people don't see the film, second of all: considering most of the pop songs in the top 40 are lyrically constipated I seriously doubt people are going to care if they don't understand the lyrics in the song. And not to mention sometimes the tie-in song is completely pointless, like the tie-in song for The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug...few problems with this, one: why do you need a tie-in song to market it? It's the fucking Hobbit, the story is more iconic than the bible! How can you have trouble marketing that!? And if you're hoping to reel in the hipster fangirl crowd by getting Ed Sheeran involved in the project, you already have Benedict Cumberbatch, you've got that market down. And finally, how dare you play a goddamn Ed Sheeran track instead of the Lord of the Rings score! Howard Overman's score for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is a masterpiece, it plays at the end of every film, and you replace that with Ed-Fucking-Sheeran!? Fuck you studio!

-Danny