Various Artists
Official Music Featured on Gossip Girl
Atlantic Records
by Noel Wurst
The whole TV show soundtrack genre is a tricky one. No one is going to purchase an album of songs from a show that they don’t watch, and I can only assume that a devoted viewer of a program would not only know every song being played during their favorite show, but they probably already own most of them to begin with!
Every song on OMFGG (points for creativity, Gossip Girl) reeks with downloadability. Each track comes from an artist who was lucky enough to write one song good enough for an Apple or Volkswagen commercial (or a Gossip Girl soundtrack) and they then filled the rest of their album with the most mundane material imaginable. The Kooks, The Ting Tings, and Phantom Planet are all here, not surprisingly, and they all primp and strut their way through the singles that fans and haters of the show alike have all heard a million times before.
Dawson’s Creek released a soundtrack about 10 years ago, and it was the exact same situation. Fast forward a couple of years and the OC pulled the same stunt. Songs everyone already knew by heart, and nothing else. Now it’s Gossip Girl’s turn, and while they’ve certainly upped the ante by raising the slut ratio, it’s still simply an extra attempt by the show’s parent companies to squeeze out every dollar they can out of the fans. I’m either completely wrong and these soundtracks are loved by everyone, or I’m dead on and this new release is already old by the time it hits the shelves.
