What is the best licensed music to make its way into videogames?
Pro skatin' with Tony Hawk wouldn't have felt half as cool without tracks like Motorhead's Ace of Spades, and I fear I wouldn't have cried as much as I did at the end of Life is Strange if not for Foals' Spanish Sahara.
Welcome to Critical Hit (formerly known as Soundtrack Sunday), where I celebrate and lament all things videogame music, audio design, and the ways our favourite games make our ears tingle.
Licensed videogame music has its place—throw it in willy-nilly and the vibes are very much off. But a well-placed song plucked from the radio charts or more indie pastures can add an extra level of immersion or flavour to a moment that might not hit quite the same with an original score.
In-game radios are the easiest examples of this. Think of all the '80s music used to bring Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to life, or driving around in Saints Row 4 while you duet Paula Abdul's Opposites Attract. Or sports games, which tend to utilise a healthy dose of modern-day beats and old-school vibes to make the whole thing feel just a little cooler.
For me personally, I much prefer when licensed music is used a little more cleverly. I absolutely love the way BioShock Infinite uses real-world music as a narrative device, and the way episodic games like Tales from the Borderlands utilised them to a T as a way to set the vibe of the next few hours (or cap off an episode with a montage) much in the way your traditional television shows would.
A shoutout that I so rarely give, though, is to Lollipop Chainsaw's incredible collection of tracks. The original release, not the RePOP version that made its way onto PC a few years back. It's a stellar curation that's spunky, spiky, and exactly what a teenage zombie-chainsawing cheerleader with a depreciated boyfriend would listen to.
That means of course Tony Basil's Mickey is front and centre as one of the tracks—the music video is a bunch of cheerleaders, it had to be—but grungier tracks like The Runways' Cherry Bomb and Riot Rhythm's Sleigh Bells carve some much-needed edge into Lollipop Chainsaw's vibrant comic book style.
Music choice for Lollipop Chainsaw was vital when you consider its bosses are all themed around it—like punk rocker Zed (voiced by Mindless Self Indulgence vocalist Jimmy Urine) and Elvis-adjacent rock 'n' roll zombie Lewis Legend. Throwing in all of these grungy, abrasive songs that clash with the bright world while perfectly complementing the game's themes? Absolute baller.
I will forever thank that game for making me a fan of The Runways, which is why I might have to put Cherry Bomb as one of my all-time licensed music inclusions. But what about you? Is there one licensed track that kickstarted a love for a new genre or artist, or one that you simply can't listen to anymore without thinking of the game it appeared in? Be sure to drop a comment and let us know what it is and why you love it!