Far Out There - Character Soundtracks: Jenna

As a result, Jenna’s playlist is another one that’s pretty heavy on obvious, familiar choices. Not only is the afore mentioned “Take On Me” present, but so are a slew of other “play this song to immediately indicate that your movie is taking place in the 80s” standbys. “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club, “Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes, “Kids In America” by Kim Wilde, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears for Fears, “Always” by Erasure (aka the Robot Unicorn song), “Forever Young” by Alphaville (aka That One Song From Napoleon Dynamite), even frickin’ “Neverending Story” by Limahl is on here. All super famous, all familiar to the point of over-saturation to people who actually know anything about 80s pop. Even a lot of the more “obscure” choices only qualify in very relative terms, specifically forty years later, American terms. “Together In Electric Dreams” by Phil Oakey, “The Number One Song In Heaven” by Sparks or “Secret” by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark might not have the same meme-level familiarity as those previous songs I mentioned, but there’s still plenty of people who would shake their heads and sigh at the suggestion that any of them are “obscure.” No, this is probably the most hits-heavy character playlist yet. making sure the house doesn’t burn down and basically overachieving at pretty much everything she does. Adulting that hard, for that long, has GOT to wear a person out (not that I would know, I draw cartoons), so really, it makes perfect sense that Jenna’s music of choice would be as un-adult as possible. This is the sort of music that rewards the act of listening without thinking too hard, and provides a bright happy escape from reality to those who do. Why WOULDN’T Jenna listen to audio cotton candy like this when she needs to unwind? It’s totally in character! TOTALLY not just an excuse to justify my mental image of Jenna alone in her room, blasting “Take On Me” by A-Ha through a pair of big, dorky earphones, happily dancing her little heart out.

The other problem is one that’s come up a few times already: Jenna listens to music that I don’t really know much about, at least not as much as other genres… and I’m a little embarrassed to own up to this one. Me not having an encyclopedic knowledge of hundreds of years of classical music while compiling Alphonse’s playlist was a matter of simple ignorance, THIS is the far more cringe-inducing fallout of being an ABSOLUTELY INSUFERABLE classic rock snob in my youth. While I technically qualify as a “child of the 80s,” you’ve already seen amble evidence of how I was almost exclusively brought up on a musical library that didn’t extend past 1973. I listened to the Atlanta oldies station exclusively as a child, and the preferences established then stuck with me for decades. By the time I was out of college, I’d broadened my horizons to include later classic rock and contemporary indie stuff, but for the longest time I HATED 80s pop. Synth keyboards, drum machines, slick digital production, anything even REMOTELY 80s sounding just sent me into a blind, seething rock elitist rage. I don’t know if I had some repressed, traumatic encounter with a new wave band or what, maybe MTV bit me as a toddler, but I just despised 80s music on general principle. I only listened to REAL music, maaaaaaaaan! Thankfully, I’ve mellowed out a LOT in my old age, and can finally appreciate the simple charms of Casio-fueled bubblegum pop when I’m in the right mood, but it still means I haven’t accumulated years worth of obsessive knowledge the way I have with other genres.

As a result, Jenna’s playlist is another one that’s pretty heavy on obvious, familiar choices. Not only is the afore mentioned “Take On Me” present, but so are a slew of other “play this song to immediately indicate that your movie is taking place in the 80s” standbys. “Karma Chamelion” by Culture Club, “Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes, “Kids In America” by Kim Wilde, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears for Fears, “Always” by Erasure (aka the Robot Unicorn song), “Forever Young” by Alphaville (aka That One Song From Napoleon Dynamite), even frickin’ “Neverending Story” by Limahl is on here. All super famous, all familiar to the point of over-saturation to people who actually know anything about 80s pop. Even a lot of the more “obscure” choices only qualify in very relative terms, specifically forty years later, American terms. “Together In Electric Dreams” by Phil Oakey, “The Number One Song In Heaven” by Sparks or “Secret” by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark might not have the same meme-level familiarity as those previous songs I mentioned, but there’s still plenty of people who would shake their heads and sigh at the suggestion that any of them are “obscure.” No, this is probably the most hits-heavy character playlist yet.

But thankfully for my music snob credentials, there are at least a FEW genuine obscurities here you probably won’t hear anywhere else, or at least wouldn’t expect. For one thing, I fulfilled my pathological need to have at least one Japanese song on as many playlists as possible with “Romantic Ageru Yo” by Ushio Hashimoto, the ending theme to Dragon Ball. I know, a song from one of the most popular anime of all time isn’t exactly a deep cut, but it’s still a much needed change of pace from all the (mostly) English New Wave tracks. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s a little weird that there’s only one early-Jpop song in Jenna’s playlist. In many ways, Japan eighties’d harder than any nation on Earth, you’d think it have a stronger presence on this of all soundtracks. In a more knowledgeable person’s hands, it probably would, but my musical blind spot extends to Japanese music as well. Most of the 80s stuff I know about is either Visual Shock or City Pop, and I can’t see Jenna having enough tolerance of either hair metal or jazz fusion for that to work. So apologies to any totally perfect for this Japanese synthpop bands who got left out because I don’t know you exist. (Actually, I WANTED to include another anime song, “Nantoka Naru yo” by Fumie Kusachi as heard on Twin Signal, but apparently a full version of that song has been scrubbed from the internet completely)

I also managed to appease that lingering prejudice towards 60s music with one song I GUARANTEE no one would have heard if I hadn’t specifically brought it up here: “Secret Heart” by The Monkees. Yes, THOSE Monkees, the oldies ones. They did some reunion stuff in the 80s, and this is probably the single most 80s thing out of all of it. It would sound COMPLETELY out of place in any collection of their classic stuff, but this kind of sugary pop is absolutely perfect for Jenna… though there IS something fundamentally weird about hearing Mickey Dolenz sing it. I mean, he performs it fine, but this is the kind of lightweight fluff that was obviously intended to be sung by a teenage girl, not a middle-aged dad. So try not to think about the fact that I just pointed that out. You’re welcome.

Actually, that’s not even the most hipster deep cut on this playlist. I’ve earned myself some massive “you probably never heard of this” points by including a song by A Flock Of Seagulls that ISN’T “I Ran” …and then went for a x2 Obscurity Combo Bonus by having it not be “Space Age Love Song” either. No, Jenna’s pick is “Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You),” which still isn’t THAT obscure as far as Flock Of Seagulls songs go. It was a Top 40 (if not Top 10) hit pretty much everywhere, which is a heck of a lot better than any of their subsequent singles ever did. But let’s be honest, YOU couldn’t have named more than two songs by A Flock Of Seagulls, so my neurotic need to feel like I somehow know more than everyone else is satiated.

The funny thing is, that’s really not the least known song on here by a long shot. I also threw in a few comparatively modern tracks that never the less sound like just the sort of thing Jenna would dance along to. The most obvious picks are two tracks by Joy Electric: “Burgundy Years” and “Dance To Moroder.” Joy Electric is a really blatant throwback to Erasure-ish synth and only synth pop, in fact “Dance To Moroder” is an ode to the guy who produced several of the other songs on this playlist. So that’s a pretty self-explanatory inclusion. Not so obvious is “Disconnect The Dots” by of Montreal, a band normally known for being really challenging and artsy and not pop friendly in any way. But somehow, this alternately bookishly-twee and offputtingly hypersexual band of indie darlings went through a surprisingly chart-friendly phase in the mid-2000s. They had a song used as the jingle for Outback Steakhouse and everything. “Disconnect the Dots” was never in a commercial that I know of, but it easily could have been.

And then there’s “Space Unicorn” by Parry Gripp. Yes, marco’s “ironic” ringtone in Star vs The Forces of Evil. It’s an actual, real, full-length song, and of COURSE Jenna would love it. Admittedly, it is a bit more conventionally “rock” than just about anything else on this playlist, but I just couldn’t bring myself not to slip it in somewhere. It mentions frickin’ “marshmallow lasers,” how would Jenna NOT love it?

So, that’s Jenna happy, sugary, synthpopy character soundtrack, something for you to listen to and try to forget just how long it’s been since I actually updated her side-story comic. I swear it’ll start up again! For real! I’ve got a whole stack of page rough drafts sitting right over here! It’s totally gonna happen! Really!

(After Tax’s playlist seemed to work out okay, I tried to have Jenna’s include more official music videos for songs rather than just audio over a still image or lyrics. After all, this IS 80s pop we’re talking about, one of the most video-centric ages popular music will ever see. How can we NOT bask in the cheesetastic glory of some early MTV videography? Well, I was able to include a decent number of vintage clips, but even while staying away from YouTube Music, region restrictions still proved to be enough of a problem that I had to skip several. “Always” was an especially heartbreaking one, since that’s one of the most eighties things the eighties ever eighties’d, but EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY POSTING of the actual video I could find was North America only. Actually, that was one of the more understandable ones, at least in the sense that I could look at the massive red blob of region-locked nations on the map and know “oh, this video is only accessible in the US and Canada.” A lot of the other ones were WAY weirder in where they could or couldn’t be seen. Like, the official “Karma Chameleon” video is accessible in all the most obvious places you think it’d be caught up in right issues, like China or England or Russia or Japan, but for some reason it’s blocked in places like Palestine, the Vatican, Bermuda, and Greenland. Not even in Denmark, just Greenland. “Secret” is blocked in all the same places, plus a smattering of even more oddball entities like Jersey, the Isle of Man, Guernsey, the Åland Islands, and Saint Barthélemy… and yes, I had to look several of those up. They’re a bunch of island territories under some degree of governance of the United Kingdom, France, and Finland respectively… all nations where the “Secret” video is NOT restricted. I don’t know what it is about these island dependencies that makes them way more persnickety about internet videos than the mainland. Also, I must confess that the video I posted for “Kids in America” is not, in fact, completely unrestricted. It’s blocked in Sweden. Only Sweden. Kim Wilde isn’t even FROM Sweden, she’s Australian. Why the heck would some company in Sweden have a beef with that video? I dunno, I’m actually not sure it’s the “official” video for that song anyway. Some of these hail from that immediately pre-MTV mindset of just filming performances for variety shows and reusing the clip when necessary. Like, you should have seen some of the clips for “Neverending Story” that I almost used before caving in and using a low-quality but unrestricted version of the official video. SUCH cheestastic lipsynching. …also, as I finish up writing this just now, how on EARTH did I manage to put together a playlist like this and NOT include “Video Killed The Radio Star”? I hang my head in shame.)

Jenna's YouTube Playlist