First I want you to listen to the following Broadcast song off one of their older albums. The song is called Valerie. I always thought it was a cool song but I didn’t know much about it’s origins. The lyrics seemed kind of odd. Then I saw the video on youtube.

Valerie by Broadcast - The video is just film clips from the obscure Czech cult film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders(from the erotic horror genre(?)). Notice how the imagery seems to inform the lyrics.

…then I saw this - the intro to the movie. Listen closely to the main musical theme. Sound familiar?

By the way, I suggest watching the whole movie off youtube - it’s actually pretty creepy and a worthy experience.

…so I criticized Smashmouth earlier for borrowing from the Joe Jackson song but I’ll retract my criticism and say that Smashmouth are still jackasses, but not necessarily because they stole from a well written Joe Jackson song. Broadcast however I absolutely adore and although it seems they borrowed very heavily for their song, I still can’t fault them for bringing something of quality to a larger audience. In this case it was the film music of a very hard to find art house movie. I suspect they do this quite a lot - I know they are suppose to be complete movie & art buffs. As further proof - check out this video for their song Tender Buttons where they integrate the photography/art of Jeff Walls into a music video.

Tender Buttons by Broadcast