Latest news with #videoGameMusic
The Verge
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
PlayStation's concert series is coming to the US
Sony is bringing its PlayStation concerts to the US this fall, where you can hear live performances of tracks from franchises like God of War, The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, and Horizon. Ticket pre-sales for PlayStation: The Concert begin on Wednesday, and you can see the full list of current tour dates on the PlayStation website. In addition to music from those big tentpole games (and the setlist better include Ghost of Tsushima's incredible title drop), the concerts will showcase 'fan-favorite themes from Bloodborne, Astrobot, Journey, Uncharted, and Helldivers 2, offering a rich and diverse journey through the PlayStation universe. A live band will play the music while 'the latest LED technology and state-of-the-art multi-layered projections' will turn the stage into 'a mesmerizing visual masterpiece.' These sorts of video game concert series are becoming increasingly common. Square Enix put on a FFVII Rebirth -focused tour, for example – I went to it last year, it was fun! Kojima Productions is putting on a Death Stranding 2 concert series that will begin a world tour later this year. And after the brief orchestral performance of Balatro's soundtrack at The Game Awards last year, I'm hoping that Jimbo hits the road with his band someday, too.
The Verge
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
I see a new Hades II update.
Among other things, The Unseen Update adds new forms for each of the game's weapons, new boss fight variations, and, most importantly, a kickass new song from Scylla and the Sirens. The game just keeps getting better. There's still no v1.0 launch date, but Supergiant Games is 'starting to prepare' for the launch, according to a blog post. It's currently in early access on PC, but when it hits 1.0, it'll come out on Switch and Switch 2.
Telegraph
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How A-Ha's Take On Me became the soundtrack to the end of the world
The makers of the Last of Us 2 video game were hunting high and low for the perfect song. They'd commenced work on an emotive cut scene in the survival horror adventure in which vengeance-bound hero Ellie discovers a guitar in an abandoned record store and strums a tune for love interest Dina. But what track could fully convey the zombie apocalypse and its sheer, gut-churning horror? No, not Shape of You by Ed Sheeran. The sequence needed to be more than merely disturbing. Music had been Ellie's way of connecting with surrogate dad Joel before he was brutally taken from her when their nemesis Abby beat him to death with a golf club. With that in mind, the track would have to speak to Ellie's grief for Joel, her blossoming romance with Dina – and the sheer terror of a world overrun with mindless gibbering horrors. As viewers of the second season of the TV adaptation of The Last of Us will now know, the producers finally got their ideal song. It was A-ha's 1985 mega-smash Take On Me, which – as performed by Ellie actor Ashley Johnson in the game and Bella Ramsey on television – is stripped down and twisted into a bluesy lament. Many pop songs from the mid-1980s would struggle under the weight of that treatment – imagine a dystopian do-over of Bananarama? But Take On Me soars. How did a highlight of the 1980s hit parade end up soundtracking an emotion-shredding scene in a blockbuster video game? Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann had wanted to use A-ha from early in the process of designing the Last of Us 2. He suspected, however, that the rights would be beyond the budget of his studio, Naughty Dog. Then came a twist he could never have predicted – a literal 'a-ha!' moment. 'I said it in passing, thinking we'd have to find something else. And then Halley [Wegryn Gross] my co-writer, her best friend is Lauren Savoy… whose husband is the guitarist for A-ha,' Druckmann would tell the Washington Post. 'She made some phone calls and like a week later we had the rights.' Just as music is a point of connection between Ellie and Joel, so the Last of Us soundtrack has fleshed out the TV show's portrayal of a world where hope is almost – but not quite – extinguished. Take On Me has already been featured in series one of the HBO adaptation, where Ellie listens to it in a flashback scene in which she had her best friend Riley visit an abandoned mall in Boston. Pearl Jam's Future Days is, for its part, a recurring coda in both game and show, carrying in its taut acoustic guitar and un-fussy melody the stoic spirit of Joel. The series has even reprised the Stranger Things /Running Up That Hill trick of introducing a new audience to an old tune. This happened in series one when Joel and Ellie drive away from paranoid 'prepper' Bill's house to the strains of Linda Ronstadt's Long Long Time – streams of which increased 5,000 per cent the week after the episode. It seems unlikely that the feat will be repeated with Take On Me, if only because the song doesn't need the publicity. It has been streamed 2.3 billion times on Spotify, while its comic-book-style video has two billion hits on YouTube. It is considerably more famous than Last Of Us. Take On Me also has a backstory equal to anything from a prestige TV show. It was written by future A-ha guitarist Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and keyboardist Magne Furuholmen for their first band, Bridges. But they were a duo of teenage would-be punks and they binned the track – originally called Miss Eerie – on the grounds that it was 'too bubblegum'. They remained of that opinion when they moved to London with dreams of cracking the music industry. Only after they had failed to progress their career and returned to Norway did they have a change of heart. A school friend named Morten Harket heard Miss Eerie and told Waaktaar and Furuholmen they had a huge potential hit. Shortly afterwards, the three formed a new band, A-ha, and recorded the song under the new title of Take On Me. Decades later they would reveal that the biggest inspiration was The Doors and keyboard player Ray Manzarek. 'Ray Manzarek was hugely influential; he brought classical music into pop,' recalls keyboardist Furuholmen – who created the song's memorable synth riff. 'Manzarek's almost mathematical but very melodic, structured way of playing the keyboard was a huge influence in how I approached my instrument.' A-ha were also keen to spotlight Harket's haunting vocals. 'We started thinking, 'How can we showcase this incredible voice?'' Furuholmen told Rolling Stone. 'So we were doing this spiralling thing up, and Morten came up with an inflection of the melody that made it much more interesting.' Interesting – but hardly an overnight success. Signed by Warner Brothers in London, they recorded Take On Me twice – first at Rendezvous Studios in Sydenham, south east London, and later at RG Jones in Wimbledon. The first version was released in 1984, with a stilted video of the band miming against a blue background. It stalled in the charts at 137. At this point, they would usually have been dropped. However, Take On Me had come to the attention of British-born Warners USA executive Andrew Wickham, and he was smitten. 'I couldn't believe my ears when I heard Morten Harket sing. I thought, how can somebody who looks like a film star sound like Roy Orbison? I thought, this is unbelievable.' He signed A-Ha to Warners in America and bankrolled the second recording of Take On Me, overseen by producer Alan Tarney (best known for writing Cliff Richard's We Don't Talk Anymore). This new version was slicker and more soaring – though that didn't stop it from flopping again in the UK. Determined to give the tune one final push, Wickham hired director Steve Barron – whose pop credits include Michael Jackson's Billie Jean and Bryan Adams's Summer of 69 – and gave him six months to perfect a new video using cutting-edge 'rotoscoping' art in which A-ha were brought to life as cartoon animations. 'It was their first single and it hadn't worked. There had been a number of attempts,' Barron told the Telegraph in 2020. 'When I first met them they were young and fresh. They'd had these disappointments. It wasn't quite happening. I met them in a youth hostel in Bayswater. They were all there on single beds. It was pre-fame, definitely pre-fame. They had no money. I sat down and explained my idea. They were totally up for it.' Mainly shot at Kim's Cafe on the corner of Wandsworth Road and Pensbury Place in London, Barron's video involves a young woman (model Bunty Bailey) reading a comic book. She sees a montage of sketch drawings involving the obscure sport of motorcycle sidecar racing. After the hero (Harket) wins the race, he extends his hand and draws her into his story. Pursued by the other racers, he rips a hole in the fabric of space and time through which she escapes. Later, Harket goes through the portal, exorcising his cartoon identity by slamming into the corridor outside her flat, and the couple is reunited. Sidecar racing and inter-dimensional romance are a strange mix for a pop video, but then, the mid-80s were the high point of the musical promo as art form – see also Michael Jackson shooting an horror-movie in miniature with Thriller or Kate Bush roping in Donald Sutherland for the steam-punk fever dream that was the promo for Cloudbusting. It proved an instant sensation – helped no doubt by the chemistry between Harket and Bailey, who briefly became a couple. 'I'm sure Morten wouldn't mind me saying that he was naive about girls and things. He wasn't that experienced in relationships. There was one scene where they were holding hands,' recalled Barron. 'We did about six takes. I suddenly looked around and they were holding hands off camera as well. I thought, 'Oh, of course'. Soon it was all over Smash Hits that they were boyfriend and girlfriend.' 'I have no doubt that the video made the song a hit,' keyboardist Furuholmen told Rolling Stone. 'The song has a super catchy riff, but it is a song that you have to hear a few times. And I don't think it would've been given the time of day without the enormous impact of the video.' Third time proved the charm for Take On Me. Re-released in autumn 1985, it topped the US charts and reached number two in the UK. Success proved a mixed blessing, though. A-ha never set out to be charts stars: recall how they had initially rejected Take On Me as too pop. They had become fodder for Smash Hits when they dreamed of being in Rolling Stone or the NME. 'We were seen as a band that looked great. That we had an image,' said Harket. 'We spent no time on our image. Less than most bands, definitely. We were perceived as the opposite. It was never the case.' For all A-Ha's misgivings, Take On Me is regarded as one of the great singles of the 1980s. Now, it is having another moment. Its bittersweet aura is a perfect fit for a story about the end of the world – and the band appreciate the Last Of Us's take on the tune. 'When I was on set, I was recording [Bella Ramsey's] performance off the monitor and I texted it to Paul [the A-ha guitarist] and he was so moved by it,' said Druckmann in a recent podcast. It is a reminder that while a great pop song is often tied to a particular time and place – in the case of Take On Me, a Wandsworth Road greasy spoon in 1985 – the spell it casts can last forever.
