Champions of the Earth — OST Vol. 1
Music has always been an important part of my life. And since I first started making movies with my parents’ 8mm camcorder, I found ways to cut music into them. I have playlists for just about everything I’ve ever written, or am writing now. It helps me see it in my head — because as a film kid, a lot of what I write ends up being the cheap novelization of the movie I get to watch inside my noggin. So for me (a child of the 80s) my writing playlists are almost always the “original soundtracks” of my mental picture show. Everything I write has its “Power of Love” or “Danger Zone.” It’s just that I don’t really ever tell anyone else or share them.
Champions of the Earth is interesting because the cast writes it together in the moment. As collaborative storytelling governed loosely by a D20, the show sometimes feels less like a game and more like a Cronenbergian time machine we power with the little teenage scars we’re all still carrying around with ourselves. In some ways, it’s not my place to pick all the songs to accompany something we all own and build.
But I’m the producer. And I’m the audio designer. I “score” Champions with soundalikes and evocative bits that our listeners should recognize, or things that are emotionally similar. The “crush” cue involving Martha, Hux, and Olive always reminds me of the “You’re So Cool” Hans Zimmer cue in True Romance, for example. In college a very pretty girl invited me to her apartment to drink wine and watch that film while somewhat inadvertently destroying me in the process. “You’re So Cool” is the cue in my heart for being young, crushing hard, and probably being annihilated by it.
So yes. Champions of the Earth has an OST. Herewith is Volume 1, annotated.
It covers Episodes 1–5, the “pilot” arc. The show takes place in 200X, but if you listen to the show, you know that thematically, we’re a bit unstuck from the early 00s. So it is with this. The OST here is more about mood. And sometimes little jokes. I love a good wink in a soundtrack, subtle or otherwise.
Thanks for listening. Hopefully this makes things even more special.
TRACK ONE: “Champion” — Barns Courtney
Martzi found this gem and couldn’t wait to play it for me. The lyrics, especially given Nico’s devil imagery, are stunningly on-the-nose. If Champions were an HBO or Netflix show, this would be the main titles music. I find this amusing in hindsight, because I think we all thought we were going to tell a Power Rangers story. The grit and angst of our teenage years just rolled in when we started telling the story from a place of truth. This song feels like Champions, which in turn feels like being a teenager. It’s ten miles of bad road you barely notice because the stereo’s cranked and you still feel just a little bit immortal — even if you have no reason to feel that way objectively.
TRACK TWO: Walk on Water — 30 Seconds to Mars
Originally, I thought this was the opening credits music. If the CW did the show, this probably would be the main song still. Thematically, I’ve always baselessly felt like the credit song’s your chance to offer a musical framing remark about what the show is and what it means to you as a creator. Veronica Mars using the Dandy Warhols springs to mind as a great example of this. That song sounds like pop addiction but it’s so fucking mean while it smiles — which is that town, that school, even Veronica herself.
This 30 Seconds to Mars song is the right kind of on-the-nose about what you’re about to be hearing, but it’s also the doubtful question in the hearts of the show’s protagonists that’s become the central conflict among them: do you believe?
TRACK THREE: Headphones — Walk the Moon
This is Huxley’s song. This is Huxley for the whole first arc in a lot of ways, but it’s also the song I would use in a rights-cleared world for his character introduction as Clayton beats him up. Behind-the-scenes, when I rolled Huxley, we agreed he was gonna be Ferris Beuller. No one was more surprised than me to learn my first act in control of his character was going to be getting pummeled by a bully.
The story’s so much better this way, though, and 15 episodes later, Huxley’s the team’s metaphorical good pair of headphones. In the sonic sense, this is what Huxley sounds like at the beginning, too. Fast, cool, a little rough around the edges. But steady. Solid.
TRACK FOUR: Let ’Em Talk — Kesha
Initially, it seemed to me like Kesha would be Mel music. One of the things that has me so in love with these characters is how wrong I was about that. The Champion most likely to own a Kesha CD is Martha.
I’ve told Martzi I suspect Martha would own one if Kesha was mainstream in 200X. By the second arc when we really meet Martha properly, we see she’s got a lot of fire in her. She has her own opinions. She’s been mocked and ridiculed and she has a challenging mother who wants her to be someone different. Martha doesn’t listen to singer-songwriter pop. Martha owns some serious music of rebellion, but she keeps those songs hidden in her heart.
I like the version of Martha she’s become, who isn’t a nerd girl trope. Who stands up for herself, who fights back hard, who wants to kiss the new girl. Who, like the singer, will go down fighting if the alternative means getting paved over by a bunch of assholes who think they can put her in a box.
Let ’Em Talk, Martha. They can’t hurt you.
TRACK FIVE: Under the Influence-Elle King
Firstly, Elle King uses some of the same vocal intonations Amanda uses to voice Mel. But to continue a theme, I think we all thought Mel was going to be a trope “bombshell” instead of this complicated broken girl who smokes weed and cheats on tests and isn’t ready for the power that she’s about to inherit.
Emotionally, this is messy, complicated song that’s more than a little sad. A lot of our fans have of sympathy or empathy for Mel’s character, and this just felt like the kind of song we’d hear when we met Mel and finally met the real Mel.
In my head, Mel always looks a little like Elle King, to boot.
TRACK SIX: ANGRY AGAIN — Megadeth
Funnily enough, Jackson got to pick first when we created characters and he snatched metalhead from me. I was in a metal band or two, including one in high school with one of my best friends who also used to whisper “Hail Satan” in the halls of our Catholic high school like the monster he was. Ben and I swapped CDs a lot and made mixtapes for our friends and he lent me this Megadeth CD where I found this track. It’s always been a favorite.
Nico namedrops Mastodon as a favorite band on the show. I also know Jackson has a playlist he made for Nico that he listens to before every session to get in character, and I seem to recall it has a lot of Mastodon. I still went for Megadeth.
“Angry Again” ended up being a super on-the-nose pick by Act Two for our pal the Berzerker, but I picked the song for Nico because of its weird pedigree. Angry Again was written for the weird 90s artifact film Last Action Hero which has a super trope-heavy premise and in no way sounds like it goes together with the song. It also alternates between Mustaine’s theatrical snarling and some weird hooky melody in the chorus that just feels so NICO. Not as fierce as he wants to be. This song is the literal audio equivalent of Mean Metal Eyes.
TRACK SEVEN: I Follow Rivers — Lykke Li
Diagetically, I believe Olive’s mom would have bought this record but it hasn’t left Olive’s Discman in months. As we wrap up this section of giving each Champion a song to sort of plant some flags, I have to admit Olive was the hardest. Some of this comes from a feeling I have that we haven’t met all of Olive, yet. Also, Gina is such a liquid fire roleplayer that she throws out these little gems and details all the time, but it’s become clear we won’t know everything there is to know about Olive until Gina says it’s time.
Olive is pretty sheltered. It’s easy to assume she hasn’t had a lot of exposure to popular culture. But I think she listens to music. Since Ep. 15 just aired, I can say: I would use this song for one of Olive’s “Forest Dances”.
TRACK EIGHT: Help Me Run Away — St. Lucia
This cool but soon-to-be-passe trend of aping 80s and 90s music today is starting to sound a little played, but this song…
Apart from the large amount of running that happens in the first part of the arc (seriously, my library has a lot of running footsteps on a variety of surfaces thanks to this show) the sound and tone of this track fits with the lighter Saturday morning show Champions keeps trying to be whenever it’s not an angst-fueled feelings simulator. If the show were truly an artifact of the era it’s set in, this song would be there during those early light-hearted moments when those poor disaster children first encounter the Dessicated and the “Talleks.”
Mel’s “less talking, more running!” amid Martha’s shouted protests that running without a plan is just going to get them killed only for crazier hikinks to manifest is vintage 90s adventure show stuff. I love it.
TRACK NINE: Neo-Tokyo — Dance with the Dead Remix — Scandroid, Dance with the Dead
Okay, this is just a shameless neo-retro track in homage to cool anime, 80s things, and the rest. I picked a TechNoir-ish 80s-AF track for the arrival of the aliens at the end of the Pilot episode to be crystal clear about where in time we were and what we thought our aesthetic was going to be. We’ve drifted from that a bit, but in a cool organic way.
When we rolled up the characters, Collin played Magic Sword on loop in the background. (I have that recording somewhere? I just realized that. I should find it.) Probably I should have put one of their tracks here, but the one that fits the best was aggressively included in Thor: Ragnarok’s marketing push and really, who can blame them?
Scandroid has a badass cover of the Force theme from Star Wars, also, and in the SW game I’ll run for our friends someday, oh hell yes I’m gonna use it.
TRACK TEN: Back from the Dead — Skillet
I love a good on-the-nose cue, as mentioned earlier. I also love a good rock-fueled fight scene, and a good loud track in general. This is a great song with great energy. The “ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba” rhythmic stutter in the chorus is just this loud, aggro, dumb metal thing that maybe feels like Nico but also just feels like kids discovering rebellion and their own power.
You just have to look at the album art, honestly.
Also, people who know me know that my wife and I famously had a plan for zombies and evil robots but NOT an earthquake for the first few years of our marriage, which says a lot about us, perhaps. But because we’ve done a lot of thinking about it, I’ll say that we’ve also agreed that no matter what happens in life, if the world goes to shit and there are zombies everywhere — at minimum you should have a couple good songs queued up to slay monsters with style.
TRACK ELEVEN: Do Your Thing — Powerman 5000
Spider One, the frontman shouter of Powerman 5000 is also Rob Zombie’s younger brother. I find this tidbit fascinating because if White Zombie and Rob Zombie’s music were heavily influenced by B horror movies, Powerman 5000 has always been heavy on schlock MST3K sci-fi. Their albums fluctuate in quality (they have a GREAT covers album) but this track on a lesser-known album always stuck out as one I’d want to cut in under a fight.
Inside CotE, this feels like it goes under the first fight with full powers on the football field. The song’s got some teeth, but it’s also a little bubblegum by Powerman standards. I LOVE when they do that, personally, and bubblegum rock is so endemically tied to Power Rangers, especially the first film, that it seems like a natural fit. When Martha pulls that gold spike out of the ground, too, that’s sort of the ultimate “Do Your Thing” moment for the first arc.
TRACK TWELVE: The Whip — Locksley
When they were doing some early fan art for CotE, @spoiledchestnut told me about this track. Obvious reference to a certain cool champion’s chosen weapons aside, the vibe is good, but that’s not the reason I put it on the soundtrack at the end of the day.
The nature of shows like this they can’t help but also be about the community. We take such joy in getting fanart for the show, in building in little winking references to some of our vocal fans, and doing other, ahem, extra things for the ones who like a challenge. Having one track on this OST that reflects what a listener hears and pictures in their head seemed terribly appropriate.
TRACK THIRTEEN: They Call Me Steve — Teenage Bottlerocket
Oh jeez, I about drove off the road when Spotify added this song as a suggestion when the playlist-n-progress ended. Naming the black guardian “Steve” instead of whatever cool name Collin had on his sheet was a terribly trollish thing we all did together in that early play session, but then the Champions utterly obliterating a baddie Collin had planned to be a big foe and a major challenge might have been an even bigger troll. Seriously, Steve went down without hardly a fight.
In high school they made us read Grendel. I’m not a fan, but the trope of “from the bad guy’s perspective” stuck with me, especially for comedic effect. Steve having this whole song and a backstory and basically this punk rock ballad tickles my funny bone. If you’ve listened to the show, listen to the lyrics and have a little laugh. In the HBO True Blood tradition, this would have been the credit music for that episode.
TRACK FOURTEEN: 50 Feet Tall — New Politics
You probably shouldn’t treat this playlist as literal score for the show all the time. Actually, remember when OSTs would do that? They’d put some song on the record that was never in the movie but yeah, you see how maybe it would have been? This is one of those songs. Wouldn’t be on the show probably. But here it is, mostly occupying the place that a song used during the initial mech summoning might have taken place. And here’s a secret:
When Olive calls Bluebell, I think about this song. Earlier in the liner notes I mentioned that Olive’s a hard one to nail down musically, but this is an Olive song. I think at least one Champion would agree with me. Obviously, Olive’s the tall one, and we’ve made a lot of hay over her height more recently, but she also has the tallest mech, AND is maybe the best at using her mech right off the bat. Maybe in general. And she’s intimidating in ways she doesn’t understand.
New Politics is a cool band I’ve been following for a while. My favorite fact about them is they were cool enough to re-record a song for The Sims 4 in Simlish, the made-up language of the game. I am a sucker for songs written expressly for the soundtrack that are obviously about the movie . I like to think New Politics would be down to do a Champions song.
TRACK FIFTEEN:D.R.K. — Hunter and the Bear
Gotta have a big noisy fight song to fight a giant mecha dragon over your small town. I’m sometimes conscious of getting older and too often dragging my teenage music forward into things that don’t make a lot of sense. Given this one chance to ACTUALLY get away with playing my old songs over something set in the era, it all felt old and unexciting. I cannot for the life of me remember how I found Hunter and the Bear, but listening to the song is like hearing a new, fresh song from Y2K that I’m not sick of or have too many other memories or baggage surrounding.
That opening guitar riff manages to evoke both Kill Bill and then some epic Chili Peppers before sliding into its own thing. Good track. Good fight. Until someone rolled a critical fail and lit part of the town on fire, that is.
TRACK SIXTEEN: AMBULANCE — My Chemical Romance
Good lord, could we do an angsty teenage Y2K show and NOT invite My Chemical Romance to the party? I loved “I Never Told You What I Do For A Living” the first time I heard it, and it was on CDs I burned for people to share new music for a long time. Black Parade’s a touchstone for kids a little younger than me, and good lord Danger Days is the soundtrack to a madcap colorbomb Mad Max-meets-Tank-Girl story I wish was real. They forever won my love with “Vampire Money,” a song about how they were not going to sell out and do a credits song for a certain vampire movie, but actually, that cover they did for Watchmen is one of the best things about the movie.
MCR digression aside, this song is part of a series of singles they released from stuff that didn’t make their final album on the eve of their breakup. The pilot arc of Champions literally ends with the FAN FAVORITE CHARACTER (OBVIOUSLY) being carted away in an ambulence, but when that moment happened in the game I heard this song in my head instantly because it is emotionally the way it felt when that first game ended. Exciting, scary, powerful, and a little sad.
So.
Thanks for listening. Again, this is official un-official. Hear whatever you ant, this is just for grins. Maybe you found a new song. Hopefully you had some fun. I love music, I love when people share music with me, and I’ll happily talk about music maybe too much with any of you.
And yeah, there are more playlists. Just wait.
In the meantime, if you haven’t subscribed or rated and reviewed the show and you had fun here, that would be swell. You could also check out some of the great content from our friends at our new network, Nerdsmith!
If you REALLY liked this, eh, you could always buy me a coffee. We’re saving up for some better microphones and the good ones cost a LOT.
In any case: I’m just happy to share something that brings me so much satisfaction. Okay. Go rock hard out there and…have yourselves an adventure.
