Here’s the problem with the music on Daisy Jones & The Six
The songs from the fictional band on Prime Video's hit show are simply too safe to be great
TV Features Daisy Jones
The music from Daisy Jones & The Six will undoubtedly mean a lot to some people. It could inspire viewers to want to have their voices heard, even if they’ve never had any musical aspirations. And it could give others a glimpse of what confidence can look like for a person making their art their living. Now, whenever those folks hear the songs from Aurora, the album created for the show’s titular fictional band, these very real feelings could resurface. This is an experience I seek every time I put on a good music documentary or go see the latest biopic or fake band movie in cinemas—and it’s been one I’ve sought out ever since my movie date with my musician dad to see That Thing You Do! when I was a kid. But there’s something consequential that I expect from these stories and the music made to tell them: authenticity. And that’s where Aurora falls short of the greatness the world of the show insists it has attained.
Authenticity here doesn’t mean period accuracy. It becomes clear early in listening to Aurora that giving it a true ’70s feel isn’t the focus. The goal seems to be to make these songs hits in today’s market, for Target moms who ordinarily prefer Top 40 Country, but found the Daisy book on an endcap one day, liked it, and have now decided to give this show, and its music, a try. (No disrespect to Target moms! I’m a card-carrying Target mom as well as the worst kind of music storytelling purist, and not sorry about either.) It’s not a bad strategy, from a marketing standpoint, to steer the album’s sound in the direction of that flashy-clean Nashville style. It’s probably what helped to get this show made, that crossover appeal. The Eagles set the template for that whole thing during the Asylum records era in which the show takes place, so in that sense, it is period accurate. Plus, composer Blake Mills has worked across genres himself, so he’s more than equipped for the challenge of making something with broad appeal. That really seems like the purpose of these songs, and he mostly succeeds; they’re all passable.
What feels inauthentic about Aurora stems directly from this greatest band/greatest album of the 1970s status it strives to uphold. Before even pressing play on the opening track, it’s bound to feel unearned. It feels like the team behind this show and album decided that these characters and their music had to maintain the rock star mythology so doggedly that they were afraid to do anything creatively that might challenge that. No sound could be organically imperfect, no vocal naturally off. The problem is that these songs are so relentless in their campaign to be cool, you can sense every mapped-out moment, every perfectly vetted pitch glide or growl as you listen. Even the grammatical mess of a lyric “go ahead and regret me, but I also will too regret you” seems intended to stand out as wrong, but in a clever way. As such, it all feels deeply impersonal, like they’ve smoothed out the edges and made something dull.
The music choices in the context of the show, the influences that the characters namecheck, and the songs playing in the background all seem to regurgitate what most viewers would accept as cool, too. Only in episode five of the show do the characters let their guard down a little as being less than deeply impressive all the time. This episode seems to intentionally evoke guilty pleasures, as Daisy and Billy swap stories about the first records they bought for themselves. Daisy’s is “Iko Iko” by The Dixie Cups, and Billy’s is “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window,” but he’ll be so mad if she tells anyone. But why? The Beatles were clear about using their parents’ music, by no means cool, as influences on songs like “Your Mother Should Know” and “Honey Pie.” In Daisy Jones, we get Karen and Graham eye-rolling over Graham’s date’s preference for Barry Manilow. They’re all so above it all, and the music feels that way, too. No one’s having a laugh making any of it. It’s all so serious.
The thing is, great records and great movies about music need some point of contrast to work best, something weird or at least different from the rest of its offerings. In music movies, it’s usually another musician character with a distinctly different sound, as with Stark Sands’ character Troy Nelson, the golden boy army man folk singer in Inside Llewyn Davis. We buy Llewyn’s brooding tortured artist all the more with that guy on the scene. In Daisy Jones, we don’t even get a sense of a distinct writing voice between the two main characters.
On great albums, it can be that songs serve as departures, palate cleansers from the Big Ambitious Work, things that are tonally different from everything else we get, like “Never Going Back Again” or “Songbird” on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. While Aurora has a few ballads that slow down the tempo, it has nothing like this. Its most out-there instruments, like the glockenspiel, are all over the place in ads and stock YouTube background tracks these days. It’s nothing that people might not like. As an album, it throws a lot at the listener, and in doing so, it lacks subtlety. As mentioned, there are ballads here, but every other song feels like an onslaught of proven cool sounds, like the artists are checking in every few seconds: Do you like me now? How about now? Is this the greatest thing ever?
The Daisy Jones music has to be liked. That’s its whole job. When the artists we love were making their albums that are now canonized, they were hoping to make something great; certainly they believed in their capacity for it. But working musicians, especially at a time when there was a less aggressive pop music machine, knew there were no guarantees. They had people thinking they were weird or stupid for pursuing music at all, and they saw all manner of artists achieve hits that no one could have predicted. They saw other, highly talented peers fail unexpectedly. This show and its soundtrack are out of touch with that reality. It’s doing too much to reject it and portray its subjects as inevitably cool. (They’re never even shown having a bad gig; they fast-track past it!) But maybe the real magic will come when the fledgling artists inspired by Aurora—or the idea of it—make their own music and concoct something decidedly more original and fun.
95 Comments
Then it is staying true to the book. Which to me read like an attempt to mimic a 70’s bar to stadium band. Skim milk.
Thanks for the warning, one more reason to skip it.
The music for bands invented for movies and TV rarely works, and it especially doesn’t work when the songs are supposed to be mega-hits.
I still can’t figure out how anyone thought Shallow from A Star Is Born was anything other than trite pap. Yet in the movie every time someone heard it they were enraptured. It’s a boring, shallow (sorry) ballad sung by someone with a great voice.
Yet it sold millions and won an Oscar.
That’s because it was Gaga and in a movie. IRL no one would ever have noticed.
Counterpoint: The Monkees!
“On the Dark Side” from/by Eddie and the Cruisers.
Eddie and The Cruisers.
Weirdly I think the comedies get the music right more often than the dramas. Walk Hard, Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, and even Popstar all have really memorable and fun songs. Walk Hard’s songs do an amazing job of being perfect for the various eras and artists they spoof. Whereas the dramas generally deliver pretty bland stuff.
It’s true – also The Rutles, Hedwig & The Angry Inch, Metalocalypse…
Comedians and musicians seem pretty simpatico. A lot of comedians are amateur musicians or wanted to be, and a lot of musicians seem drawn to comedians as well – comedians often do the best job interviewing musicians. Might just be something in the rhythm of both comedy and music that connects them. So not surprising they’d get the music part more than dramatic writers.
Absolutely nailed it. Wish I had more upvotes for this.
The Walk Hard soundtrack is flat out amazing, and such a great example of a film getting the genres of music it’s covering.
Hey, have you heard the news? Dewey Cox died
“The Majesty Of Rock” perfectly balances taking the piss with being a legitimate banger, with its deeply shallow lyrics and scale practice hook. It’s pitch-perfect NWOBHM parody.
The Brian Wilson parody song on Walk Hard is legitimately amazing. They straight up got Van Dyke Parks to write and arrange it.
Eddie and the Cruisers is my jam! Just kidding, it was pretty cringy stuff.
Ok but Ashley O is still on my playlists
yesyesyes
Kind of a general problem for works like this, about the making of some sort of artistic masterpiece (an album, a novel, whatever) — if you include examples of the masterpiece, they’d better be pretty goddamn good. It may be better to just avoid excerpting the work-in-progress entirely.
I like how 30 Rock avoided the trap Studio 60 fell into by making their SNL analog terrible comedy instead of brilliant comedy.
Oh, man, that’s a perfect example. (Studio 60, I mean.)
Baby, can you dig your man?
It’s a problem in general with fictional artists in movies and TV. The work they create – paintings, films, songs – seldom are a great as they represent them to be to the audience. But the exceptions really do land when they can pull it off. Like Nashville (the movie) or Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Tell that to Chris Gaines!
I feel like the one exception is That Thing You Do and it’s because the style of music is so insanely specific in tone/era that there’s already a formula that the song just had to glide on the rails of.
Its similar for me when a character is supposed to be funny and they just aren’t. Im sorry but Mrs. Maisel would never have become famous
Punchline with Tom Hanks and Sally Field is a notorious example of this.
Or that movie where DeNiro plays a standup comic.
Haven’t seen the King of Comedy in years, I vaguely remember him finally doing a short set at the end and it was played for straight, I’ll have to rewatch it
Metalocalypse works.
Yep, see one of my below posts.
Riley Keough has some interesting roles under her belt. Always felt like she was somewhat deliberate about what work she took. Maybe she’s just anticipating all the legal bills fighting with Priscilla. Whatever her motivations are, it’s a little disappointing she signed up for this anodyne crap.
THEY. ARE. NOT. A. REAL. BAND.
Sounds like shit.
That’s harsh. Shit-adjacent, maybe.
fine – “uninspired bland white hallmark level garbage”.
Barber shop raga?
I don’t think it was smart of them to make a Patti Smith song their theme because the credits are honestly the part I look forward to the most on the show
That’s a pretty rough comparison to set a “band” up for every week.
I think that was attempt to say “ Hey look, we’re underground and hip” Just like Daisy’s first record she bought Iko Iko. LOL. Iko was never a hit when it came out in 53, in fact it was very obscure and didn’t gain attention untill it appeared in several movie soundtracks in the 80’s and 90’s. I doubt Daisy discovered in as her first record
That’s been my main complaint with the show. The music is almost really good, but never quite good enough. The acting is great. The writing is good. The music just is kinda flat. It also bugged me about the “Diamond Head Festival” the band played. First, the location looked NOTHING like Hawaii. Second, the crowd was tiny, for a festival. CGI some people in there. Third, in the late 60s – early 70s, no one would hold a festival in Hawaii. There’s not a local population large enough to support it and air travel was still out of reach of the majority of people at the time. Maybe that is the reason for my second issue with it. I’m digging the show, just some little things bugging me.
There have been festivals at Diamond Head since 1969 and they drew some major talent.
Huh. Go figure.
They play super early in that festival show from what I remember. I’ve been to a few big music festivals and those early shows typically draw pretty sparse crowds. Maybe a little more filled in than in the show, but I didn’t think it was egregious.
The real problem is it’s hard to create an album as good as Rumours. Ask Fleetwood Mac.
Meredith, funny that you evoke modern Nashville as the template for putting a layer of gloss on their music, while 70s Nashville was a pretty scuzzy place (the Eagles of course were from California). That was around the time country was moving from Hank Williams Sr. to Hank Williams Jr. What this sounds like more than anything is Almost Famous, which is a pure love letter to 70s-era rock.
“All my bland friends are comin’ over tonight”
When you lead with “it’s a hit” and then deliver “it’s fine” it always feels worse than it really is. This music is just that – fine. Watching the show, you can believe that some of these songs would be zeitgeist-y even if they aren’t 100% your cup of tea. Is the show, as the kids say, Mid? yes. but I don’t think it’s a waste of time – the performances are good, the music is fine, and the vibes are right. My biggest personal issue with Daisy Jones is that while I grew up watching and rewatching the VH1 Behind the Music on Fleetwood Mac, I never even thought to use it for creative inspiration.
The music is fine enough in the context of the show. It gets the job done. The mistake was trying to market and sell it like it was an actual album from an actual band. The producers should have just let the show be the show and not tried to tie in a whole bunch of cross promotions. That being said, I somewhat disagree with this: In Daisy Jones, we don’t even get a sense of a distinct writing voice between the two main characters.I think we do. One of the things that I actually like about the series (which I’m finding to be pretty average but also entertaining enough to keep watching) is that over the course of the first four to five episodes, the show exposes Billy quite a bit. It’s clear he thinks of himself as a master songwriter and killer frontman dragging his average bandmates to stardom, and in reality he’s neither. The confrontation between Daisy and Billy where she roasts him for always writing the same boring song is spot on and so, so satisfying to watch. Daisy writes with more complexity of lyrics and structure. Billy is stuck on simplistic rhyming couplets. He’s the one holding back the band from being great, as is clear in the scene where Daisy draws in the other band members to collaborate on revising a song. They all spring to life and the song gets way better, and Billy sits there and sulks. Billy’s songs are bad because Billy writes them, and he has the emotional range of wet paper.
I did read the book so my interpretation is probably very colored by the text but Billy isn’t a bad song writer. His problem is control. He is essentially white knuckling it through his entire life because of trying to stay sober. When he meets Daisy she helps unlock his true potential as a songwriter and producer. Conversely, Daisy needs structure that Billy brings to songs. They make each other better artists is the entire point of the story.
I’m digging the show but the songs are going in one ear, out the other. Ok, a show about a band needs songs, but I couldn’t begin to hum one of them.
I got most excited when the first episode needle-dropped 3/5 Of A Mile In Ten Seconds at the hippie party.
Part of the issue, I think, is that you think it doesn’t sound good by the standards of “the music that has maintained a strong reputation 50 years later”, instead of judging it by the standards of, say, Janis Ian or Helen Reddy. Music by artists that WAS big at the time, but which sounds really flat to go back to now.
(I’m not saying that the music secretly is great. Just that I’m wondering if the music would work better in the context of, ‘is this music that might have genuinely been considered great if you were alive in 1975 and then faded from sight.’)
Marcus Mumford makes lame music. That’s the problem.
Expecting contract writers to compose music as great as Rumours… I mean I get it, but I also get it. It’s much easier to write songs for a middling band like Stillwater than for what’s supposed to be one of the biggest and best bands that’s ever existed. I dont think it’s remotely realistic to expect the music to be as great as the band is supposed to be.
media in 2023 means beginning your article on why you don’t like an album with three paragraphs about why it’s okay if someone else does like it.
You might have better luck with ‘Keep Trying’ by Brian Pern.
Basically it’s hard to manufacture mystique. The music on, say, Rumours is meticulous and calculated as hell, but the lightning in a bottle of that album was that the songs had mystique and were interesting, but without sacrificing their universal appeal. That’s a rare thing to do with any kind of consistency. The Mac did it for a little while, as did Michael Jackson. The Beatles did it with miraculous consistency. Generally it’s not realistic to think that quality (as in how good something is, and it’s intangible appeal) can just be drummed up for the sake of a show.
Doesn’t this ignore the very obvious point that if the songwriters were able to write songs as good as Rumours….they wouldn’t be writing songs for tv shows.
I suppose you could argue that they don’t need to be innovative or tapping into the zeitgeist, just imitating what was going on. But I think your general point stands. This shouldn’t be parody, right?
Some songwriters do a lot of work and there are a few who’ve had pop hits but also do film and TV. (Or they move from one to the other, etc.) Adam Schlesinger (RIP) went from Fountains of Wayne to Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Paul Williams wrote for Barbara Streisand and the Muppets, it happens. Like the song isn’t bad honestly, it’s just a little obvious (to the point that it has the problem shows like this have where they can’t help but state the major themes as explicitly as possible so nobody misses them.)
Even Fleetwood Mac had songs that weren’t ‘great’, or even hits. It’s almost like it’s hard to produce timeless classics on demand. This seems a weird critique, especially considering the show is not about the songs. Personally, I was surprised the songs were as good as they are.
Hey, I like Sentimental Lady”!
Case in point: basically no one cares about the 9 albums they released before the Buckingham/Nicks era. The highest charting of those, 1974’s Heroes Are Hard to Find, peaked at #34 on the Billboard 200. In reality, the vast majority of their output is neither great nor a hit.
Then Play On is fantastic, and any track with Peter Green is worth checking out. To quote BB King, “the only living guitarist to make me sweat. He had the sweetest tone I’ve ever heard”
It’s actually pretty easy to find old dudes, music snobs, and blues fans who far prefer the Peter Green years to Buckingham/Nicks.
Albatross reached #1 in the UK in 1969.
I remember the song from when I was a kid, I only just realised it was a Fleetwood Mac song.
Oh well.
“Black Magic Woman” was a hit, but for Santana.
I completely agree with you. Regret You is a great song.
Isn’t the point of the critique that all these songs are basically written as if they were ‘hits’ and they need more that aren’t ‘great’?
The problem with the songs is we don’t have 40 years of emotional attachment to them. There’s not actually any way to fix that. I think the songwriters have done a really good job creating a sound for the band, enough so that it’s believable that these guys would have been big on Earth 2.
I watched one episode, after which I asked myself “Who are these people and, if the show’s about Daisy Jones, why aren’t they defining her instead of spending so much time on surly boy’s daddy issues?” I didn’t bother watching more.
Yeah, I’ve been hating that dude since the first trailers, I’m hoping I can make it through some full episodes.
It’s difficult enough to write compelling music as a band.
Writing compelling music for a show about a fake band? Forget it.
Sorry, the *SHOW’S* problem is that *YOU* can’t get past the fact that it’s not a documentary showcasing *REAL* music from Daisy Jones and the Six?
Fuck off and get a god damned imagination.
Isn’t the show just ‘ we couldn’t afford to make a series about the emotional shitstorm that led to Fleetwood Mac making Rumours, but here’s something based on a book that’s a thinly veiled expy of that …and some generic soundalike 70s tunes”.Its literally a real life “ Jackie Jormp-Jomp, the biopic”
There’s a tendency of actual music biopics to gloss over or sand down the edges of the actual artists to get their approval and music rights, so I don’t really blame them for doing something with a fictional group instead.
You know what’s inauthentic? The crowd in that image of the band performing on stage, unless that’s supposed to be from before the band got mega-popular (I haven’t seen the show, but aren’t they supposed to be some kind of mega-popular act, like Fleetwood Mac at their peak?). Go to any music festival; you’re not able to fit entire people between other people, especially that close to the stage. They need to pony up for a shit-ton more extras and jam them in there like a school of anchovy.That shot looks like one of Spinal Tap’s gigs near the end of the movie, when they’re performing “Sex Farm” after being booked at an Air Force base family picnic.
I believe that scene is from what’s supposed to be from an early show when they add Daisy. It’s like a 1pm show at a festival and, having been to a few music festivals myself, that absolutely reflects the size of the crowds for bands that play that early.
I really like the show but the music drags it down. I wouldn’t even say it’s “safe.” I’d say it’s boring.
The question is, has ANY music written for a fictional movie band been as great as the actual hits they’re modeled after? Despite being crafted on demand, even by gifted composers, and not by the serendipitous inspiration and experience of real life artists who managed to get discovered?And where it’s not parody. Walk Hard and Spinal Tap managed it since they needed to be good as what they lovingly mocked.All I can think of off hand is Mitch & Mickey from Mighty Wind. No parody and all the heart.
Music and Lyrics does a pretty good job of nailing both 1980s bubblegum pop and mid-2000s “pretentious but not nearly as deep as it thinks it is” pop. Though it may help that in both cases the stuff it’s mimicking is supposed to be that kind of semi-disposable pop music that’s fun to listen to but no one tries to argue is the music that changed the world and made a whole generation feel.
Steel Dragon’s “We All Die Young” from Rock Star was pretty damn good 2000s straight metal. Granted, anything that’s got Zakk Wylde’s pinch-and-squeal and alt-picking insanity in it’s gonna be pretty damn good. And that’s Jason Bonham on the skins.
I agree
Actually, The songs that were wrtten for “That Thing You Do” are very good not only just the title song. Had ‘That Thing You Do “ and the reprise played over the credits at the end been released in 63-64 it could very well been a hit
The music is identical to the itself; bland and forgettable.
The music is the same as the show itself; bland and forgettable.
Okay so I’m only basing this on the one song posted here, which is generally fine and I like the sound of it. But the lyrics seem a little… straightforward for the 70s? Like I don’t want to generalize about an entire decade of rock music but this was the time of Stairway to Heaven and Pink Floyd and I’m pretty sure Fleetwood Mac would dig into the cryptic/engimatic imagery now and then. Like you hear this and you know exactly what it’s aiming for. Nobody’s trying to decode this while high as a kite in their dorm room trying to avoid thinking about the test next Monday.
Thing is, this is a pure ‘suspension of disbelief’ issue. The story’s about a band who made it big in the ‘70s, so you’ve just got to kind of go along with the premise that their songs are good enough that they’d be the kind of thing that made it big in the ‘70s while at the same time accepting that finding actual once-in-a-generation musical geniuses to write actual songs-that-shape-a-generation to write the soundtrack is as unlikely for the makers of a TV show as it is for, well, the actual music industry.
As a touring musician from the late 70’s till the early 20’s I always try to catch movies or shows about bands and band life especially during that time period if only to see how off they are. So far the closest I’ve found are , of course Almost Famous , then The Commitments and if you can beleive it Spinal Tap ( I’ve done that scene where they have a hard time finding the stage LOL) . So I was eagerly awaiting Daisy Jones and the Six, so much that I got the book. It’s one of the worst adaptations to the screen I have seen.Keough, while is attractive , Daisy in the book is a drop dead gorgeous blond that get’s by on her looks alot.Claflin is WAY too old to play Billy , Billy is at most in his late 20’s Claflin is 36 and looks it. I’m not going into anymore details because there are many, get the book and see for yourself, it’s much better. .. Now , as far as the music. In a lot of music/ band shows that have original or use new songs for the show I can find some good ones, from ‘That Thing You Do” to some songs from “Rockstar” even some from the TV show Nashville. . I find it very hard to find good songwriting from the songs in DJ and the 6. Most of the lyrics are trite and boring and that cardinal musical sin of stuffing too many words/syllables into a rythmic pattern that just kill the flow of the song Let’s take Look at me know ( Honeycomb) It starts out like a slow ballad , which is fine , but the lyrics are so juvenile “ Tell me , tell me tell me , Baby Baby Baby. I mean C’mon it sounds like it could have been the song that the guy playing the guitar on the steps at the Toga party in Animal House that Bluto grabs the guitar out of his hands and smashes it . Then when it kicks it the rhythm is off . The song goes on to awkwardly go back n forth to 3 or 4 rhythm changes to confuse the listner so it has no flow. and finally they get to a blatant ripoff of the ending to ‘The Chain” Fleetwood Mac. Even songs like Aurora (my favorite ) starts out with great promise , a great harmony vocal that sucks you into feeling good gets all discombobulated and lost and has the bad idea to put a ‘Whole Lotta Love “ acid trip in the middle before it kicks back in to the best part of the song. I will give them one thing musically, The tones and textures especially the guitar sounds are extremely close to what was happening in the 70’s, in fact the texture of all the songs is quite representative of the 70’s soundFor me The show was a double disapointment. First in it’s deplorable adaptation of the book and then such bad songwriting in the soundtrack. It’s like in most songs the sonwriters said “ Let’s come up with a good part, then totally screw up the flow and make it as if a 16yr old girl with marginal talent wrote the rest
It’s incredibly sad that people act like this is anything more than a piece fiction, bad fiction no less, a meandering, drug promoting mess with music that is beyond bad
I completely disagree. Wow. None of the actors were musicians, and they all learned how to sing/play instruments for the TV series. They are all accomplished actors, but only fledgling musicians. How can they be expected to take huge creative risks when they are brand new as musicians? They’ve done an amazing job at building a band with presence and chemistry, and at performing fun and enjoyable music (that wasn’t created to change the course of music history). Instead of being undeservedly critical, why not celebrate the fact that a group of novice musicians was able to come together and create something special and believable?