What's In A Theme?

 

What makes a good theme song?

It's a question man has asked since first he crawled out of the primordial ooze... okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's still something people have occasionally wondered. What seperates a Ghostbusters from a Bodyguard, or a Live and Let Die from a, urgh, Die Another Day?

You can wonder and wonder, and the truth is there are a lot of factors that come into play, including the film itself, the song itself, who wrote it, does it fit stylistically with the film, does it work, is it necessary and so on and so on.

And I'll tell you something, writing that list out just then made me question why we decided to have a theme song for Follow The Crows.

Yeah, that's right. Follow The Crows has a theme song, and it's a good one, if I don't say so myself. Written and performed by Aidan Sheehan, of Nudybronque, the song is titled Big Time Love and tells the story of our lead character through metaphorical lyrics and a damn catchy guitar riff.

One of the first things that came up when we were writing Follow The Crows was the final image. We had a lot of discussion about what the final image would be and how we would get to it, but we also had a lot of discussion as to why that image should be the final one. Why not carry on? Why end the film here.

Obviously throughout this discussion we came to the conclusion that, while this was definitely where the film needed to end, was it finite enough? Was it an ending? How do we make it an ending? And then it hit us, a theme song. One that comes out of nowhere and slaps you in the face with its awesomeness.

Luckily that's what we got when we asked Aidan if he'd be interested in writing and performing it for us. Because as it is, layered over our final scene, it's beautiful. At least, I think it is. You know the film ended, and you know why. But you can't help feel something when that theme song kicks in.

Hopefully ours will be more Footloose than it will Loose Yourself.