Music business, I am on to you. You’re all secret Doctor Who fans. Just admit it. Let your Whovian freak flag fly.
A few of you are doing a particularly shoddy job of keeping your fandom membership under wraps. Why else would your songs show up six, seven, EIGHT times on our Rose/Doctor playlist?
This week’s post is about the most well-represented artists on our soundtrack to the universe’s greatest OTP. Whether you know it or not, you’ve been writing music that perfectly scores our Rose and Doctor.
Also, Coldplay remains awesome. David agrees. Deal with it.
“Building a Mystery” – Sarah McLachlan
“You woke up screaming aloud
A prayer from your secret god
You feed off our fears
And hold back your tears, oh
Give us a tantrum
And a know-it-all grin
Just when we need one
When the evening’s thin
Oh you’re a beautiful
A beautiful fucked up man
You’re setting up your
Razor wire shrine.”
I’ve had to cross reference this song in my mind, as it has always been, until now, strictly a Fox Mulder anthem.
Look at those lyrics. That’s 100% the FBI’s Most Unwanted. But Fox is going to have to share it with my Doctor. They have a lot in common, after all. Complex and single-minded. Emotions turning on a dime. Obsessed with their own, specific morality. And they both press all my romantic, anti-hero buttons.
On a personal note: where did weird, folky Sarah McLachlan go and why was she replaced with Adult Contemporary Sad Dog Commercial Sarah McLachlan? Remember that time she spent an entire music video naked in a mud pit? I blame the kids. And the ASPCA.
“Dreaming with a Broken Heart” – John Mayer
“When you’re dreaming with a broken heart
The giving up is the hardest part
She takes you in with your crying eyes
Then all at once you have to say goodbye
Wondering could you stay my love?
Will you wake up by my side?
No she can’t, ’cause she’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.”
When pressed to choose, I will usually pick the “Impossible Planet”/”Satan Pit” two-parter as my favorite modern era Who episode. But maybe I should change my answer, because I keep coming back to “Human Nature”/”The Family of Blood” in these posts.
We’re mostly used to the enigmatic and manic Doctor that Sarah was singing about just a few seconds ago. But, ugh, how these episodes get right into the heart of him like no others do. The Doctor-Doctor won’t tell Rose how he feels about her. He won’t tell anyone else either, and hardly admits it to himself. But John Smith doesn’t know that. He just dreams and writes it down.
This is what’s ACTUALLY written in “The Journal of Impossible Things” and why people who deny that Rose/Ten is a real thing are just plain wrong:
“I find myself wanting to draw a perfect Rose, over and over although I cannot find a Rose anywhere!
Roses
Perfect Rose
The perfect Rose
It’s a perfect rose.
Perfect Rose
Rose perfect Rose
Perfect Rose
Perfect Rose
Perfect Rose
Perfect Rose
In my dreams I keep asking a girl where to find one, and she is dressed in the most extraordinarily immodest way.
She will not answer me, and she keeps walking away.
I keep dreaming of a girl.
Girl in my dreams
I remember this girl I have drawn her although I know her well in my dream
I know her well I know.
I know her
She is my-“
Just plain wrong, I tell ya.
“Incomplete” – Backstreet Boys
“Empty spaces fill me up with holes
Distant faces with no place left to go
Without you within me I can’t find no rest
Where I’m going is anybody’s guess
I tried to go on like I never knew you
I’m awake but my world is half asleep
I pray for this heart to be unbroken
But without you all I’m going to be is incomplete.”
Annnnnnnnngst and feelings and ANGST.
Hate on angsty Ten all you want, but I find him incredibly compelling. My only post-Doomsday solace was Ten’s mourning of Rose. If he had happily skipped off to find his next sexy sidekick, I would have been completely done with this show.
“In your tears and in your blood,
In your fire and in your flood,
I hear you laugh, I heard you sing,
‘I wouldn’t change a single thing.’
The wheels just keep on turning,
The drummers begin to drum,
I don’t know which way I’m going,
I don’t know what I’ve become.
For you, I’d wait ’til kingdom come,
Until my days, my days are done.
Say you’ll come and set me free,
Just say you’ll wait, you’ll wait for me.”
My many daydreams about the TARDIS coming to take me away (shut up, you have them too) vary in setting and theme, but one detail always remains the same: there’s that look. That look he gets when someone says something interesting or does something brave or asks the right question. As Eleven said to Clara, “I never know why. I only know who.”
Nine is drawn to Rose in spite of himself. But by “The End of the World,” you can see in his face that there’s no way he wants to go back to traveling alone. She proves herself in every way and reminds him why he needs someone. But – not just anyone.
“I only take the best,” he says. “I’ve got Rose.”
“We’re drivin’ down the road
I wonder if you know
I’m tryin’ so hard not to get caught up now
But you’re just so cool,
Run your hands through your hair
Absent-mindedly makin’ me want you
And I don’t know how it gets better than this
You take my hand and drag me headfirst, fearless
And I don’t know why but with you I dance
In a storm in my best dress, fearless
So baby drive slow ’til we run out of road
In this one horse town, I wanna stay right here
In this passenger seat, you put your eyes on me
In this moment, now capture it, remember it.
Run your hands through your hair.
Your hands through your hair.
Hands through your hair.
Through your hair.
Your hair.
HAIR.
T. Swifty was on to something with that.
Thanks to Coldplay, JM, Sarah, T-Swizzle, and BSB for being such playlist-friendly artists and to you, always, for reading. Theme and song ideas are always, ALWAYS welcome. You know where to put them. Till next time…
If I have ever been whole after Doomsday, your posts and that Incomplete video have completely undone me. I thank you.
I virtually yelled at Sage for posting that video. She’s the worst. I mean best. 🙂 -K
That …
video …
can’t reach keyboard from fetal position on the floor …
the *gulping* at 2:14 and 2:58 …
*owwww*
Y’all have never included “Set Fire to the Rain” for this very reason, I’m sure. The feels would resound across the universe and crash into the feels from this one and it would be Event Two.
Entropy my large pink behind. FEELS will be the end of us. I’m gonna go have to look at Lady Soliloque’s “White and Nerdy” vid a while and get happy feels again.
xoxo
This is not angsty feels (yay). This is introspective, happy feels (yay).
“This” is Ben Taylor’s “Worlds Are Made of Paper,” a portion of which has been sticking in my head for a while lately and I couldn’t remember enough of it to look it up until I heard it again just now. It’s Nine- *and* Ten-appropriate, I suggest. Plus: Bonus Beatles Reference, because 😉 reasons.