It’s obviously a mutually beneficial relationship. An opening theme by a popular artist can draw people in that might not otherwise be interested, as loosely related as the themes sometimes are. Honestly, despite being a Gundam fan, I was initially drawn to Gundam 00 because L’Arc~en~Ciel’s single for it, “daybreak’s bell” is absolutely gorgeous. And SOUL EATER drew me in from the very beginning thanks in part to the sheer awesomeness of it’s opening theme, “resonance,” by T.M. Revolution. In turn, flocks of loving fans pick up the corresponding singles, often rushing them to the top of various charts. As well, many people are introduced to artists for the first time and subsequently hunt down other songs by them. For an emerging artist, that kind of attention is invaluable.

Really, how else are people exposed to new music? Word of mouth? The radio? I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend much time in cars anymore. A majority of my commute to work is by train. At school, my primary mode of transportation is either walking or the bus. Though gas prices have slumped in recent weeks, I imagine that many people are still spending less times in their cars. Besides, even when I am in a car, I’m usually listening to music I already know is good. Visual advertisements are less potent for music because they obviously can’t share the actual song with you. I don’t watch music channels. Tools like Pandora and last.fm are nice, but I don’t know how many people actively search for new music. Most of the time, I think it’s something that just happens. I’m too lazy to bother, in any case, and thus, my primary source of new music, aside from anime, is word of mouth — recommendations via friends.

This doesn’t bode well for my collection of English-language music, or even worse, for my American music. For some reason, most of the songs I have in English are of Canadian or British origin. Or even of Korean and Japanese origin, though I put Engrish music in its own special category. I do not own any American CDs. As soundtracks don’t really count, the only English-language CD I own is “Gravity” by Our Lady Peace, a Canadian band. How hilariously unpatriotic! Though some might argue that the States just don’t have very many good artists, I’m inclined to think that there are plenty, but most of them are just too indie to be noticed. So.

Question: why don’t more American artists provide music for television shows, whether cartoon or otherwise? Why don’t more producers of shows encourage them to?

Most daytime television shows have gimmicky theme songs. Sometimes they’re memorable. Sometimes not. Sometimes they change by season. Sometimes not. Usually though, they’re pretty cheap sounding. I find most cartoon themes to be somewhat better — things like the Powerpuff Girls are hard to forget, and I really like the theme for Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Invader ZIM was good too. But why not use commercial artists? Even just for insert songs and promotion. They Might Be Giants recorded a song about Courage the Cowardly Dog and another for Dexter’s Laboratory for Cartoon Network, and there used to be random commercials/promos on CN that were basically music videos with rehashed footage from various cartoons. I really loved those things and would have liked to look up more music by many of them, especially as many of them weren’t mainstream artists. (In particular, I wish I could have found more music by Soul Coughing, who contributed music for a video involving the Flintstones, but those were the days before p2p and it was exceedingly difficult to find anything by nobodies in stores.)

Why don’t they do this anymore? Those kinds of promotional shorts have long since disappeared, and even though Puffy provided the music for Teen Titans and their own (horrible) show, Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi, I’ve yet to see an American artist do this sort of thing. The only reason I can think of for this is cost ’cause, sure, maybe expecting Linkin Park to do a theme song for Avatar: The Last Airbender is a little farfetched, but why not the offstream, indie artists? Like I said, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. If a video promo or a theme song isn’t doable, then why not an insert song? It really puzzles me.

Another thing I don’t get is why there aren’t more songs in movies that are actually written for the movie. Insert songs in films are generally picked from existing titles and only contribute to the general mood — the lyrics don’t fit. Even songs that end up on tribute albums, such as “Music from and Inspired by Spider-Man,” for the most part, fail to really connect to the movie itself. They’re just random pop and rock songs slapped on an album with Spider-Man’s picture. T.M. Revolution also wrote a tribute to Spider-Man, “Web of Night” — why do those lyrics seem so much more relevant to the film than, say, the lyrics to Stone Sour’s “Bother,” which appears on the aforementioned album?

Though some anime and game themes will have been taken from existing tracks (lol, “Fly me to the Moon”), and many of them don’t directly relate to the series (try connecting Utada Hikaru’s “Simple and Clean” to Kingdom Hearts. TRY IT. I DARE YOU), most theme songs are singles that don’t release until after their debut on the show, and there are a significant number of songs that were indeed written for the show. T.M. Revolution in particular is very good about this (I know, I’ve mentioned him like a dozen times already, right?), and artists like Maximum the Hormone (if you listen to the entirety of the second Death Note ending, “Zetsubou Billy,” they specifically mention Kira, etc) and Mika Nakashima (even if she didn’t write the lyrics) are worth mentioning as well.

So yeah. I don’t get it. Do you?