Rock and/or roll, and the theory of underscore

These days I'm working on a feature film called Siren. I'm writing what's primarily a rock score, which is a among other things a tremendous self-indulgence. The style of the cues has included country and western, contemporary indy-rock, Bo Didley-esque blues rock, smooth R&B, and other forays into pop styles. As you might guess, this has been a pretty fun project.

Writing a rock score isn't the same thing as pop songwriting. (Songs do play a predominant role in this film, but as integral parts of the story.) The process is conceptually very similar to writing orchestrally, in that I'll start with thematic ideas associated with characters, situations, or moods, then develop them across the course of the film. The themes are of course in a different musical language, and unlike their symphonic analogues they're often created as much during mixing as writing or recording. But I find that my methodology is very similar otherwise.

In the 80s there was an MTV-fueled trend of simply needle-dropping in songs as film underscore. Sometimes the approach worked very well, typically in lighthearted or contemporary films. Other times the end product was unintentional comedy. Now don't get me wrong: I have fond memories of The Allan Parsons Project. But their score for Ladyhawke, consisting of beer-commercial rock bafflingly added to a medieval fantasy backdrop, was actually singled out in my USC classes as the worst film score of all time. (It's possible that someone has subsequently snagged the title.)