Black Widow’s example of what music can do for storytelling

I know, I am privileged to be married to a musician who writes his own music. And who also writes and rewrites things for me. As I was scrolling down some of my video’s I found this one again… The North Star-version of La Casa de Papel. Such a great version! And very welcome during a presentation about Binge Marketing in which films and series are kind of important.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

The other day, when we were watching Marvel’s Black Widow I heard another song that is on repeat in my car right now: Smells Like Teen Spirit from Malia. Yes, a cover of the Nirvana-version as we all recognize from the 90’s (well, at least I do) A very dangerous mission, but they have more than succeeded. It’s the intro song of the story of Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow, and it does a lot more to the storytelling than you’d think.

To give you an idea of the importance of this cover you should read this article (Warning: spoilers). Kayti Burt, writer of the article, describes it as “a haunting and emotive cover” and “It packed a ton of expository information into the opening credits of Black Widow, without making it feel like an info dump.”

Examples from brands

There are many brands that use familiar music, but unfortunately most of them seem to get stuck to a tv-ad instead of the real evergreen storytelling. This clip from a big Dutch e-commerce brand, Wehkamp, is such an example. I believe they did a great job on brand storytelling with Billy Joel’s ‘She’s Always a Woman to Me’. Unfortunately this too was created as a tv-commercial, not as great evergreen content. It only aired for a few weeks. The audiences really loved it. But Wehkamp failed to take it further than a tv-spot.

Any other examples?

I’m curious about your examples? Any great movie songs? Songs in series? Brands? Let me know. And maybe I’ll use it in my next Binge Marketing presentation.