The Twilight Saga: Every Indie Band's Favourite Soundtrack

A veritable cornucopia of labels have been plastered onto Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight franchise but ‘rock & roll’ is not one of them. One Mormon’s thinly veiled advertisement for the abstention of sex before marriage hardly chimes with average levels of promiscuity attached to any single member of The Bravery. Yet, surprise surprise, where there’s money involved, another typically credible list of artists have been willing to soundtrack that time worn out tale of boy meets girl, boy turns out to be a vampire, both fall in love.

From a record label’s perspective it’s not just the fact that anything with Twilight’s name on it can rake in the big bucks that makes the prospect of sneaking their act onto the compilation so appealing. It’s the fan base that buys into the brand. These aren’t your typical indie fanboys who ditched Muse as soon as they tried to replicate the Doctor Who theme tune on ‘Uprising’.

No sir. The kids who sent both previous Twilight OSTs to the top of the Billboard 200 with a platinum sales certificate are much more likely to be familiar with Britney’s discography than Florence’s. As such, the bands who contribute tracks of note can expect an invaluable profile boost in that hardest of markets to crack, the USA.

The problem is though, both previous audio incarnations of Edward and Bella’s supernatural union have been less than outstanding. Last year’s ‘New Moon’ LP was the first to contain all-new material from each featured artist and as a result was lavished with a helluva lot of half baked output. Hint: “If it’s not good enough to make the new Editors album, it’s not good enough to break America.”

One of the few highlights of that record, bizarrely enough, came from none other than Thom Yorke with his brooding ode to paranoia ‘Hearing Damage’. With his place in the highest musical pantheon secured since 1997’s ‘Ok Computer’, it would have been understandable had Thom churned out an unused b-side from ‘The Eraser’ era. Yet the Radiohead frontman stuck to his typical level of quality control and in doing so produced a song that fitted the schizophrenic mood of the movie.

The lesson to be drawn from Mr Yorke’s example then is if as an artist you choose to jump onto the Twilight bandwagon, at least do it with some panache. The very reason you’re on the record isn’t for a higher artistic purpose but to cross a market demographic. With that in mind, there’s little point in sullying the process to placate the sense of credibility you’ve already cast off to make the cut.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Soundtrack - Meet The Artists