The KAOS soundtrack
A bonus post on ear worms
Ever since I watched the first episode of KAOS, the new Netflix series for grownups about Greek Mythology, the music has been rolling around in my head and refuses to go away. This post is for (maybe) getting the music out and the understanding in.
TLDR: not much Greek Mythology, lots about nostalgic music.
I was young in the 70’s and 80’s, so much of the top 40 pop songs of that era made a big impression on me. In the first episode of KAOS, the soundtrack leans heavily on music from that era.
Contrast that with my all-time favorite TV show, Better Call Saul, that makes superb use of music to accentuate the story. The most memorable songs from that show hail from the 50’s and 60’s or have that type of blues-influenced, ballad sound.
One of those songs is “Something Stupid,” a duet by Nancy and Frank Sinatra, which plays over a montage of Kim and Jimmy, the main characters, having a devastating time of not being in love. A melter.
It’s a true Baby Boom era musical celebration, and it’s perfect.
When I heard those songs, most of which I had never heard before, they intrigued me and gave me something like a reliable IV dopamine drip.
The KAOS soundtrack did the opposite: immediately threw me into a place of a heightened, familiar, rush of pure emotional excitement.
The first song, “Money for Nothing,” by Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits (1985), breaks in immediately underneath the voiceover of Prometheus, the narrator of the show. The virtuoso ripsaw guitar riff punctuates the first glimpse of Mount Olympus, captioned with big, pink all-cap letters, and then, when we get the first closeup of Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, you can just about hear Knopfler sing “Look at that yo-yo.”
Devastating. At least for a Gen Xer like me.
The next song is from 1966, Sam and Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Coming,” so it’s not of 70’s or 80’s vintage, but it’s got that same strong excitement, with big brass and compelling vocals, as Prometheus explains that the yo-yo Zeus is actually a bad actor who needs to be overthrown.
Next, we introduce Dionysus doing Dionysian things in a night club, and what better way to accompany that than with ABBA’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man after Midnight),” a disco pop classic from 1979. In this song, it’s the violins that are featured, with the leaping phrases that say “this is epic.” I’ve always thought it’s often the strings—violins and synthesizers that sounds like strings—that make pop songs as catchy as they are able to become.
After the conversation between Zeus and Dionysus, we have one of the most iconic opening guitar riffs of the 1970’s, from Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” (1976). If you were alive then and young, you heard it and were enthralled.
That’s where the initial excitement ends, and something new comes in, predictably not upbeat, familiar songs from the past.
One of the main storylines of KAOS involves Orpheus and Eurydice, and Orpheus himself (Killian Scott) sings the next song, “Eurydice,” composed for the show by Dan Smith from the group Bastille. This is a rocking tribute to Orpheus’s love for Eurydice, and it’s okay, but of course doesn’t have the power of nostalgia behind it.
No spoilers, but the next song is a sad, slow one for a reason: Asaf Avidan’s “Darkness Song” (2020). It’s beautiful and haunting.
More sadness: a brief cut from George Jones’s “A Picture of Me (Without You)” (1972).
The final song is Paul Simon’s “I Know What I Know,” from the classic album Graceland (1986), which brings us back to that upbeat, catchy spirit from the beginning of the episode, and probably by no coincidence brings us back into the 1980’s.
Honorable mention to Isabelle Summers, the British composer of the score of the show, a classic, orchestral sound that feels like what you’d hear in a more traditional movie about Greek mythology.
So is there anything to take away from this playlist? It’s notable to me that Orpheus is a big part of the story and yet his music is overshadowed by the spot-on choices of other music.
Was there a way of making the KAOS Orpheus’s music somehow irresistible the way the original Orpheus’s was when his story was first told?
I don’t see one.
But you might say that the soundtrack of this episode complements the story of a superstar musician rather than overshadows it. It’s a story about a great musician, so the music underneath it should be great.
I welcome your ideas about this particular mini-obsession of mine. It isn’t often that this happens to me, so I would love more enlightenment.