The title of this post is not as clever as those discussed below.
Hey, how've you been? I've had a pretty good Easter, in contrast to last Christmas. I burned a copy of the Mystic Ark soundtrack to accompany me on the drive to dinner, and I was in the process struck again by the score's idiosyncratic track names: "Your Eyes Are Always Beautiful When You Fight," "C'mon; Packed with Power, I'm Your Opponent!" and "Greetings; How Are You? With Me, It's Just the Same Old, Same Old, Day in, Day out." The titles often take this familiar, chatty tone toward the characters whose actions are being scored, sometimes written from their perspective as dialogue, which suits the frequent Alice in Wonderland stage-play tone to Mystic Ark's events, as well as the ultimate prominence in the game of a loving, watchful parent figure. (In a slightly different vein, "Your Eyes Are Always Beautiful When You Fight" has always grabbed me as a title, straddling the line between ennobling endearment and fetishistic voyeurism.)
It got me thinking about how track names can be an art all their own:
- Secret of Mana is another game with lengthy track titles: "The Color of the Summer Sky," or "What the Forest Taught Me." Reflections or observations of phenomena - little glimpses of the natural world. Which is appropriate for a game that's all about an appreciative journey through the wonders of nature.
- Motoi Sakuraba's score for Baten Kaitos is, like Mystic Ark's, an OST famous for its slew of alternate track names. "A Tower Built on Sand," like the track itself, is evocative of the illusory, transitory nature of the phantasmic continent Mira in its sand castle imagery - an unusual combination of natural & manmade beauty built on an unstable foundation, here one moment, gone the next.
- No More Heroes names its tracks with inexplicable conglomerations of nouns and modifiers - "Pleather for Breakfast"; "Mach 13 Elephant Explosion" - that nonetheless describe the bizarre fights they score. In a few instances, though, the references escape me; I've investigated multiple times whether "Stop Hanging DJs" is an anagram for something but have come up empty-handed, and I'd still like to know what "Vioectrolysis" means. "The Virgin Child Makes Her Wish Without Feeling Anything" is a long title for a short song, but it matches the grandioseness of the performance and the over-the-top melodrama of the song's events.
- The classic in the department of odd videogame track names is FF8's "Only a Plank Between One and Perdition." It manages to sound poetic without actually communicating a coherent visual metaphor.
- Phantasy Star II had some evocative track names for an early RPG, due perhaps to a character limit on the in-game sound test that allowed only for very short names that were "Engrishy" in their seeming irrelevant abstractness but appropriate anyway. "Violation," for instance, plays in the Esper Mansion and is appropriate for what feels like trespassing into such a still and holy place. "Never Dream" is unsettling, like the infamous ending - not threatening, but adrift, subdued, and vaguely elegiac; a disturbing half-memory from a phantasmal world that lingers with you through the morning.
- The first Silent Hill gives its tracks names with apparent deep significance ("Only You," "Till Death," "Heaven Give Me Say", "Never End, Never End, Never End") that do not correspond at all with the situations they score. That's in line with the game itself, though - a message from an alien frame of reference. This shred of ephemera means something to somebody, but damned if we're going to let you in on what it is.
- The Castlevania series has a rich history of music, but I'd single out "Cross Your Heart" for the title's three levels of imagery: a crucifix held against one's heart (or, as the alternate track title states, "close"); a sworn promise; and the action of crossing oneself in a prayer for divine guidance, or to remain safe - all three of which suit a vampire hunter.
.
It got me thinking about how track names can be an art all their own:
- Secret of Mana is another game with lengthy track titles: "The Color of the Summer Sky," or "What the Forest Taught Me." Reflections or observations of phenomena - little glimpses of the natural world. Which is appropriate for a game that's all about an appreciative journey through the wonders of nature.
- Motoi Sakuraba's score for Baten Kaitos is, like Mystic Ark's, an OST famous for its slew of alternate track names. "A Tower Built on Sand," like the track itself, is evocative of the illusory, transitory nature of the phantasmic continent Mira in its sand castle imagery - an unusual combination of natural & manmade beauty built on an unstable foundation, here one moment, gone the next.
- No More Heroes names its tracks with inexplicable conglomerations of nouns and modifiers - "Pleather for Breakfast"; "Mach 13 Elephant Explosion" - that nonetheless describe the bizarre fights they score. In a few instances, though, the references escape me; I've investigated multiple times whether "Stop Hanging DJs" is an anagram for something but have come up empty-handed, and I'd still like to know what "Vioectrolysis" means. "The Virgin Child Makes Her Wish Without Feeling Anything" is a long title for a short song, but it matches the grandioseness of the performance and the over-the-top melodrama of the song's events.
- The classic in the department of odd videogame track names is FF8's "Only a Plank Between One and Perdition." It manages to sound poetic without actually communicating a coherent visual metaphor.
- Phantasy Star II had some evocative track names for an early RPG, due perhaps to a character limit on the in-game sound test that allowed only for very short names that were "Engrishy" in their seeming irrelevant abstractness but appropriate anyway. "Violation," for instance, plays in the Esper Mansion and is appropriate for what feels like trespassing into such a still and holy place. "Never Dream" is unsettling, like the infamous ending - not threatening, but adrift, subdued, and vaguely elegiac; a disturbing half-memory from a phantasmal world that lingers with you through the morning.
- The first Silent Hill gives its tracks names with apparent deep significance ("Only You," "Till Death," "Heaven Give Me Say", "Never End, Never End, Never End") that do not correspond at all with the situations they score. That's in line with the game itself, though - a message from an alien frame of reference. This shred of ephemera means something to somebody, but damned if we're going to let you in on what it is.
- The Castlevania series has a rich history of music, but I'd single out "Cross Your Heart" for the title's three levels of imagery: a crucifix held against one's heart (or, as the alternate track title states, "close"); a sworn promise; and the action of crossing oneself in a prayer for divine guidance, or to remain safe - all three of which suit a vampire hunter.
.