They’ll cash in with whatever they can, those money munching merchandise megalomaniacs. If they could stick Ewan McGregor’s face on a packet of throat pastilles they would. Darth Sidious after dinner mints? Skywalker Royal Jelly? A Tampax shaped like a lightsaber anyone?! No, us neither.
Slapping the Star Wars theme onto single format and launching it on the TOP 40 seems like quite a sensible idea in comparison. Can’t see it shaking the boards at the Ministry anytime soon, but we’ll assume that’s not the point.
So what is the point then?
We don’t know.
Oh, right the money…
Though surely anyone who’s a big enough fan of Star Wars has already got all the franchise soundtracks that have ever been released anyway? Be it in on CD, tape, vinyl and 8-track too, probably.
And as for the rest of us, well we don’t really want to listen to the unbelievably brassy Star Wars fanfare at any other time than when the credits are rolling. Do we? Really?
"I’m not sure it will get to number one, but it should have a strong showing in the top 10." commented Gennaro Castaldo, a spokesman for ubiquitous music chain HMV.
You can’t knock the films’ resident composer John Williams. He’s been flinging out one great movie score after another for the past thirty odd years. So what if people confuse Superman with Star Wars and nobody can ever quite get E.T. right?
At least he’s consistent. Which is more than can be said for the state of the UK chart. Unless a consistent stream of putrid rubbish is something we should be showing off about. Which it isn’t.
Who knows what folk these days like anyway? With Paula Radcliffe’s dropping her kegs turning into porn for a new millennium, some deluded people still wondering why Rover went bust and Tony Blair wearing St. Tropez to win an election, this crazy old world is far beyond us for figuring out.
So then, a Star Wars single: total waste of money? Pointless piece of movie memorabilia that, trust us, will not go up in value if you don’t take it out of the cellophane? Even, whisper it, a cynical marketing exercise?
Yeah, ‘course it is. All the above. But reserve us a copy anyway, we don’t want to feel left out. Those guys at Force.net can be really mean sometimes. They even scratch.
Buy all the Star Wars soundtracks on Amazon right now. They spread love and happiness throughout the galaxy.
[story by Chris Laverty]
