Times New Viking Originally Wanted to Pen Beck's <i>Scott Pilgrim</i> Songs

BY Alex HudsonPublished Jul 16, 2010

We already knew that the filmmakers behind Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had recruited Beck to pen songs for the title character's fictional band, Sex Bob-omb. Now, comic book writer Bryan Lee O'Malley has admitted that Beck was actually his second choice, as he originally had his eye on fuzzed-out garage rockers Times New Viking.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times [via The Playlist], O'Malley said, "We wanted them to sound like a garage band. We wanted them to sound rough and really distorted. There's this band called Times New Viking who had just released an album, and I was like, 'These guys are perfect.'"

Director Edgar Wright shot down the idea, however, partly because the band's raw sound was too edgy for a Hollywood movie. "They're mastered too loud," the director said. "They're designed to screw up a playlist."

Eventually, the filmmakers teamed up with Beck, likely thanks the influence of the movie's music supervisor Nigel Godrich, who has produced four of Beck's albums. As it turned out, Beck's vision for the band was identical to O'Malley's.

"So we start down with Beck, and the first thing he said was, 'I think they should sound like Times New Viking,'" the graphic novelist revealed. "So Beck totally understood what we were going for. Edgar and I just kind of looked at each other."

The songwriter then went about composing at his usual prolific rate. "They wrote about 21 songs, and we picked the ones we liked. That whole thing was done in one day," said O'Malley.

Only four of the Sex Bomb-omb songs ended up making the soundtrack. You can see the tracklist here, which also features two songs from the fictional rival band Crash and the Boys, played by Broken Social Scene.

The Playlist has a track-by-track review of the soundtrack.

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