*hydraulic machine noises*
Fallout.
This scrappy, billion-dollar franchise takes a fun, kooky
look at planet-wide armageddon.
It's an alternate history, splitting off from our timeline somewhere
around World War II.
Despite the divergence, Fallout features some familiar real world
culture and plenty of cultural innovation. There are new architectural styles that are
stolen from Mad Max. And plenty of cool new fashion
that is also just ripped off from Mad Max.
And yet, even with this cultural innovation, Fallout has one massive problem.
And there's only one problem with the Fallout series right now.
Other than that, the Fallout series is doing just fine.
D-despite this one. It's just the one of them.
Why, Todd,
is the music still this?
*audio from three Fallout songs played simultaneously*
The same dozen songs from before the apocalypse.
You're telling me that humans figured out how to
make a gun that turns you into goo, and yet they haven't made any new music?
That’s garbage, Todd.
Fallout is a meditation on mutation and the ways that humanity and culture
evolve to meet new challenges,
and having music that stays the same the whole time is a plot hole.
War never changes. But music should.
And today, I’m going to change it.
*tech montage music playing*
Ooh! This is a new dance move for me.
I don't know if I like it yet.
Now, you may think that Fallout’s music is fine. It fits the aesthetic, and
it adds a sense of retrofuturism.
But you’re wrong, and here’s why.
The Fallout games range in time from 2102, the year of Fallout 76, to 2287, the year of Fallout 4.
That’s a span of 185 years. Imagine for a second that our musical sensibilities hadn’t been
updated in nearly two hundred years, and the current song topping the Billboard charts
was The Alphabet Song, a song literally written about 185 years ago.
Actually, that kind of sounds possible. Modern times are weird.
What I’m saying is that if 80% of humans died today, in 100 years,
we'd still have Old Town Road, but it would have a few more remixes.
Do you really think that if the world ended in 1997, our culture would linger over
"Barbie Girl" and "Tubthumping"? That we would be complacent with the cultural detritus of euro-techno,
manufactured pop, and third-wave ska?
NO!
And yet it seems the people of Fallout have
forgotten how to make music.
Fallout 76 is littered with instruments and bandstands and stages,
but by the time you get to Fallout 3, the only instrument left is a Stradivarius
violin locked in a vault surrounded by mirelurks.
Fallout 76 also has the highest track count,
nearly twice as many as all of the other games, which implies that these tracks are being
lost over time, and nothing is there to replace it.
Only two people in the entire 185-year-span
of these games are making new songs. The first is a synth that makes the same bluesy style
as the rest of the music.
It’s good but it’s not different.
The other is a burnout DJ who does not seem to know how to sing or play an instrument.
And yet he still insists on playing a guitar,
which goes to prove that even in the apocalypse, you can’t escape
the guy who will bring his guitar to your party.
Thank god the bombs went off before "Wonderwall."
People need food to eat, sure, and, you know, clothes to cover their sinful
bods so that makes sense that those areas have continued to flourish. But Fallout is
a world where people have ignored the basic human endeavor of making art.
I won’t stand for that!
We need art because of its fundamental importance to human expression.
Songs were made long before written language to help keep stories alive, and they'd be added to
and embellished, much like the cultural touchstone of our time,
TVTropes.org.
Science may improve our health and longevity, but art is what makes long life worth living.
And that’s why I am here — to scientifically improve on this art,
and synthesize a totally new genre of music that we should be hearing in the Fallout universe.
This genre should be inspired by the music landscape and culture of Fallout's world.
Any cultural step that goes One Step Beyond current accepted standards
risks alienating its audience by being too challenging,
too intelligent.
So let’s guide our creation by considering the 10 definitive purposes of music
and how they fit into the beautiful wasteland of Todd’s mindscape.
First, to create or control emotion.
From the soaring, triumphant music of Jurassic Park
to the ice cream truck version of "Pop Goes the Weasel,"
which, for reasons I don’t understand, always makes me cry.
Evoking emotion is the number one use for music.
So what does that mean for Fallout? Well, one thing the soundtrack does get right is the upbeat tempo
of most of the songs. It cheers up the experience of playing through the wasteland.
Except for the miserable, inescapable energy of "Johnny Guitar."
Play it again, my Johnny.
In the wasteland, you need something to rev you up, keep you moving. And that's why this new genre
will only feature peppy songs.
Two: remembering or sharing information.
These can be simple mnemonics like Schoolhouse Rock! Or classic story ballads
like Kesha’s "TiK ToK."
I actually believe these will be more important than emotions just because
written language seems to be pretty dead in the future. It’s all on abandoned computers
or in diaries safely tucked up in a skeleton's ribcage.
Up-to-date information is transmitted verbally, and think about how much further it could go if it was sung.
Even an S.O.S. signal gets more traction if it comes with a little ditty,
and I learned that from Rihanna.
Three: Entertainment.
*cheesy music plays*
Four: Jingles. In other words,
propaganda.
Commercial jingles are designed to make you remember brands, and political songs fit here, too.
Because what is the "Star Spangled Banner" if not America’s jingle?
Despite the amount of remnant advertising for companies like Nuka-Cola and Radiation King,
the only jingles that remain in Fallout are the ones on Gene Autry’s spurs.
*(I Got Spurs That) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle plays ominously*
In the song he says his spurs jingl-
Fallout does have a few antiquated political songs on Enclave Radio, but as Plato said:
“Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State...
when modes of music change, the State always changes with them.”
Thank you, Plato.
The transitive property means that the opposite must be true as well.
Fallout’s state has very much changed, and so too should the music.
So our music genre should be catchy to the point of propaganda.
You hear this song once, and you know the hook and exactly what it wants you to do.
Five: To mark time rhythmically in a group, like a chain gang or rowing.
An underlying theme of Fallout is a disruption of low-wage labor systems.
Half the locations are robot warehouses or Nuka-Cola factories
or the industrial goo pit where The Joker was made.
In the 2100s, commerce is no longer the main structure around
which a human’s life is organized.
So fuck the Man, and fuck the beat he made you drum to.
The Man was beating you down, so we’re gonna focus on the up-beats.
The off-beats. Something more syncopated.
This isn't to say we're going to get overly complicated with 7/4s and 15/8 time signatures.
Those time signatures only belong in math rock,
which is to say in the garbage.
We’re taking back 4/4 from the Man and we're making it our own.
Six: Tradition music, to mark events or occasions.
This can range from singing "Auld Lang Syne" on New Years
to playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" whenever one of your pet weasels died when you were a kid.
THAT'S WHY.
They’re just songs that usher in a specific moment, like an alarm.
But most cultures in Fallout don’t seem to use them.
At the end of the quest “A Nice Day for a Right Wedding,” there is a wedding but no wedding march.
And in the quest “For Auld Lang Syne,” they do not play "Auld Lang Syne."
Which means there’s a real opening to be the only tradition song for every holiday in Fallout.
It may seem lame to force a tradition song, like making all of your friends call you by a nickname you gave yourself,
but if you believe that every tradition song came about naturally, you’re naive.
You think Vitamin C didn’t know that the graduation song would become a once-a-year cash cow?
That when Green Day was writing “Good Riddance” they weren’t
thinking “Some sitcoms are gonna have to end someday.”
Tradition songs can be crafted,
and our first song in this new genre will fit this bill.
Seven: Ambient music or background music.
A.K.A. Chill anime beats to study and relax to.
Nobody in Fallout is studying or relaxing. This one is a guide on what not to do in our new genre.
Our genre should be present and aggressive, and when you’re listening to it, you are listening to it.
Eight: To create or maintain social groups.
Without labor to constrict a person’s time or movement,
people organize into social, cult-like gangs, which makes this category
a big one. You’ve got LARPers, the AV club, the rude boys, all of which have their own
cultural standards. But there is a distinct lack of punks, which came about through a
shared political consciousness expressed through music. But we can be that, we just need to
include identity-establishing lyrics that appeal to all denizens of the Wasteland.
Perhaps this genre will help unify all of the many warring factions.
Or at least create a new, very cool warring faction.
Number nine: Stimulating physical movement. Dancing.
There is no dancing in Fallout! Well, there are a few sex workers in Fallout New Vegas that dance, but it kind
of just looks like the dancing baby gif, so I don’t think that should count.
And Fallout 76 hasn’t included a singular dancing emote. All they have are things like “smoking kills”
and “join my polycule?”
This is probably to avoid overlapping with Fortnite, which
does have a pretty long head start on dancing emotes. So for the sake of originality, I
had my research assistant, Google, find all of the dances that haven't been included in Fortnite yet.
It's just a Regency-era quadrille, and skanking.
We will make it work.
And the tenth purpose of music is to use it as a crutch when you can’t think of a different way
to end a video.
Actually, I don't think this one really applies to the Fallout universe,
so I'm just gonna take it off.
So with our nine definitive purposes of music, we can
begin to build our genre. And the more I’m thinking about these nine purposes, the more
I'm realizing that Fallout has the opportunity to create the perfect genre. One not tied
down to the whims of society.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The current music in Fallout is overwhelmingly jazz standards and rhythm and blues,
so we'll incorporate elements from those genres.
We’ll have heavy beats, syncopation, rhythm guitar, and honestly, any instrument
that fits in a mobile wasteland setting. So no pianos, but any marching instrument, like
trumpets and trombones. Things that stand up to roughing it and also would appeal to
the Brotherhood of Steel. Another thing these jazz standards excel at is having a powerful,
catchy melody sung by a main vocalist, but since it’s hard to maintain your safety
as a loner in the wasteland, we can have a lot of backing vocalists, too.
If you can carry a gun, you can carry a tune.
In terms of topics for the songs, we'll keep the themes
relevant to the people of Fallout, which based on my experience seems to be freedom from
tyranny, looting, and drinking so I can be stronger and carry more loot.
Now, we mix together these in-fiction elements with our nine definitive purposes of music.
One: We’re gonna make people happy. Needs to be Jeep commercial music. Yeah, your wife just got
eaten by a yao guai, but listen to that skiffle.
Two: All of our heroes are dead. So it's time
to make new heroes. How else are we gonna know how many beers Janice drank last week,
or how far Kevin’s head went flying when a super mutant tagged him with a fire hydrant.
Three:
Bangers only.
Four: What should I do with the information about how many beers
Janice drank? Tell me.
This is music for the scavenger, not the assembly line worker. There’s
a whole world of useful scrap out there, and this music should inspire you to get out there
and pick it up!
Six: The old ways are dead! And we've gotta make new songs to celebrate
the new ways. There is no song for when your Swamp Itch clears up.
But there should be.
Seven: Background music? NO. This is FOREGROUND MUSIC.
Eight: Fallout is a world divided,
awaiting a messiah of music to bring them all together
or at least inspire them to wear cooler clothes.
Nine: The music should inspire dances that are violent and rushed, just like
the world you're in. Yeah, your fists are used for melee, but that leaves your feet
and your elbows open to fuckin' jam!
You starting to imagine it? You starting to hear those first few notes in your head? THAT’S GOOD!
What are we gonna call this new genre that
is peppy! Informational! Good! Catchy! Pick up loot!
Traditional! In your face! Punk!
Kicks! Energetic! Educational! Fun! Sticks in your head! Pick it up!
For your cousin Ben's wedding! Right there! Society.
*dancing noises*
Spicy! Slaps hard! Pick it up! Propaganda.
Arbor Day! Pick it up!
Fuck you, Philip Glass!
Pick it up! Let's all wear the same shoes!
*repeating "DANCE!" and "PICK IT UP" over and over*
Pick it up!
*heavy breathing*
Did I just make Ska again?
*Ska music starts*
You spend your life living in a vault, and your mind begins to crack.
And when you get outside, there’s nothing to welcome you back.
She found me passed out in a rundown shack with Nuka Buzz in my hand.
She picked me up and she slapped my face, and said "Come on let’s start a band!"
She said: START THE MUSIC, Pick up loot, get off your ass!
If you don’t feel the Brotherhood of Steel, join the Brotherhood of Brass.
She said: START THE NEW, War never changes, that’s a bore!
You know we’ll eclipse the apocalypse
with a loud and brassy SKALLOUT WAR.
SKALLOUT WAR!
SKALLOUT WAAAAAAAAR!
SKALLOUT WAR!
I've never skanked so hard in my life.