Music From Gossip Girl: Season 3, Episode 11

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Courtesy of The CW

In which Gossip Girl’s music selection gives us another unneeded reason to wait eagerly for Contra‘s arrival to the RapidShares, lets us dance to the fall of young love when Imogen Heap is involved and encourages us to overdose on carpe diem.

Once again, I didn’t watch Gossip Girl on Monday but that was only because I thought they were taking the week off. So, as you can imagine, I had a nice surprise waiting for me on my DVR this morning. Anyway, this column is about the show’s music and this week’s episode — the eleventh of this helter-skelter season — featured a lot of the good kind.

Let’s start off with the use of Vampire Weekend’s “White Sky” on the show (I think I can hear a collective “OMG” resonating in the wind). The song’s use was subtle, or at least I hope it was because I definitely didn’t catch it when I watched the “The Treasure of Serena Madre”. I had to consult with the CW website to find out they even used it. I wanted to go back and re-watch the show to try and spot the song, but it’s not like I have that kind of time on my hands.

Vampire Weekend has been teasing fans with “White Sky” for about a year now, playing it at various shows and on Jimmy Fallon. Most recently, Vampire Weekend have offered a 30 second snippet of “White Sky” on a video clip on their site. And now they dare tease us by playing it on Gossip Girl! The audacity these Ivy League kids have… I welcome you to wait with me for that sweet, sweet day when Contra leaks hits stores on January 12th. Until then, here is great audio rip of Vampire Weekend playing “White Sky” on Late Night:

MP3: Vampire Weekend – White Sky

The next track that I felt highlighted and complemented the show best was, stay with me, “Whatcha Say” by Jason Derulo. Yes, it’s currently the most played song on the radio. Yes, the amount of auto-tune on this track would make Kanye West blush. Yes, despite the last two sentences, this song is actually not that bad.

The song centers around the poor protagonist who has just been caught cheating. In teenage naivety, he makes promises he probably won’t keep when he “becomes a star”. You know, stuff that will hold its own against the Kiss Me Through The Phone‘s and Down‘s of the world.

The song’s redeeming quality isn’t its recycled, yet effective beat, but the a woman scorned chorus and all of its digital-acrobatics, or as you savvy listeners might recognize as Imogen Heap’s “Hide In Seek” (which, I guess, is also recycled). Derulo’s hook is also one of the best I’ve heard from a non-Taylor Swift Top 40 hit in months.

Gossip Girl is not stranger to drugs and overdosing, so it’s no surprise that the show is one of the few that will ever license the Raveonette’s “Last Dance”. With such high profile numbers scoring such a juicy episode, “Last Dance” came as a breathe of fresh air. At least what I thought was fresh air… as the song progressed, I found that it was just Sharin Foo’s light as air vocals.

“Last Dance” is the lead single from the Raveonette’s fourth LP titled, In and Out of Control, which was released on 10/6 via Vice Records. Buy it at Insound.

MP3: The Raveonettes – Last Dance

Here is the full playlist for this week’s episode:

Vampire Weekend – White Sky
The Raveonettes – Last Dance
Thao – Cool Yourself
Jason Derulo – Whatcha Say (feat. Imogen Heap)
Paramore – The Only Exception

by Luis Tovar on December 2, 2009 ‡ 3 reactions