I don't remember the last time that I finished watching a movie or TV show and wanted to listen to the soundtrack afterwards — they really don't make them like they used to — but a new TV show on Apple TV Plus has managed to change that thanks to its inspired musical choices.
This show is Bad Monkey, a crime comedy starring Vince Vaughn and set in Florida, about a detective investigating a hand that washes up. Its final episode airs on Wednesday, October 10, and so I'm not going to spoil any of the plot in this article, but here's how to watch Bad Monkey if you haven't already.
The majority of the soundtrack to Bad Monkey consists of covers of Tom Petty covers, with most episodes ending with one and many more peppered throughout each episode. In fact of the 29 songs on the track list for the official Bad Monkey soundtrack, 21 are Tom Petty covers and the remaining 8 are parts of the score.
A range of big artists have contributed to the soundtrack including Eddie Vedder, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, The War On Drugs, Fitz and The Tantrums, Nathaniel Raitliff and Weezer, with one of the series actresses Charlotte Lawrence also providing one cover.
The topic of song covers, especially with a legend like Tom Petty, is often a sore one. However Bad Monkey's covers are absolutely fantastic, and I can't stop listening to them.
An outstanding soundtrack
At the time of writing (which is ahead of the release of the official soundtrack on Friday, October 4), fourteen of the covers are available to listen to on YouTube or Spotify. These include versions of "I Won't Back Down", "Running Down a Dream" and "Wildflowers", and I've been listening to the YouTube playlist featuring them on repeat for weeks now, because they're absolutely fantastic.
Each of the pieces interprets Petty's original song through the lens of the band or artist's style, and it's surprising just how different the song can sound with small changes to instrumentation or tempo.
Some of the songs are very faithful to the Tom Petty originals, like Fitz and The Tantrum's cover of "Even the Losers", which is musically very similar save for some slight tweaks like a new bassline in the chorus:
Others go in a very different direction, changing instrumentation, genre and tempo. One example is WAZ and Jamie Jackson (both also the composer of the score) and their cover of Mary Jane's "Last Dance", which transforms the track into a Bond-song-esque piece, and another is the version of "Yer So Bad" by Meridian Brothers which adds the band's Colombian influence to change it dramatically:
My favorites are Lissie's cover of "Into the Great Wide Open", which is largely faithful to the original but uses a rockier instrumentation that brings some changes across the song, as well as Jason Isbell's version of "You're Gonna Get It" which I likely purely because I'm a fan of Isbell and his voice works wonders in the song.
I also want to flag Larkin Poe's version of "Runnin' Down a Dream", which is the most energetic song in the roster, and you can half imagine it playing alongside an action scene as soon as you listen to it:
I'm a fan of Tom Petty but I'm by no means a super-fan, and I've discovered a lot more of his songs through these covers. In the YouTube comments sections, fans of Tom Petty are evidently just as happy with these covers as I am.
Not all of Petty's songs are available ahead of the album's release, and I'm interested to hear the new versions of "Don't Come Around Here No More", "I Won't Back Down" and "Free Fallin'" after their appearances in Bad Monkey.
Some Tom Petty classics didn't get covered at all, but with so many great songs released by the musician and his band the Heartbreakers, that was to be expected.
Great songs, but in the show...
No matter how good a song is, it won't work well in a TV show or movie if it simply doesn't fit. I've seen enough popular 1980s rock songs poorly edited alongside boring action scenes to get scared about the use of pop songs in blockbuster movies.
That's not the case in Bad Monkey though, and the songs are all woven beautifully into the episodes.
One example is "Supernatural Radio", which plays at the end of episode 7 alongside a montage of where some of our characters are. Its melancholy lyrics fit the low ebb that the depicted characters are at, as several have hit rock bottom or charted a course for it.
Another is "You Wreck Me" by The War on Drugs, which plays at the end of episode 5 as our main character fails to stop the retreat of his nemesis but still manages to win one over on him in another way. The energy of the song helps remind us that this is a low moment he'll bounce back from, and emphasizes the escalating conflict between Yancy and his enemies.
My favorite use of a Tom Petty song, however, is one I can't talk about because it plays at the end of the final episode which isn't out at the time of writing. Suffice to say that people who've been loving the various covers and songs used in Bad Monkey will absolutely adore the creative decision taken in the last minutes of the show.
In an interview with Spin Tony Von Pervieux, the Bad Monkey music supervisor, explained that each artist was picked for the song and episode in order to fit the "vibe of the show" so it's no wonder that the songs work well.
I jokingly referred to Tom Petty as the real hero of Bad Monkey in the strapline to this article, but really it's the ensemble cast of Vince Vaughn, Natalie Martinez, Meredith Hagner, Rob Delaney, Ronald Peet, Jodie Turner-Smith and Michelle Monaghan who make this one of the best Apple TV Plus shows to watch right now. However, the fantastic songs, which I've been listening to loads since I finished the show, ensure that it'll be on my mind for weeks to come.
