If you have at least casually watched the occasional movie or TV show from the past 30 years, there is a 99.9% chance that you have heard "Fade Into You," even if you wouldn't be able to name the band. The opener of Mazzy Star's 1993 album "So Tonight That I Might See" became a late-blooming Billboard Hot 100 hit and is primarily responsible for the album eventually selling more than one million copies in the USA alone, being certified platinum about a year and a half after its release. It also became the lazy go-to choice for pretty much every music advisor. You can't blame them, really-it just works, every goddamn time.
"Fade Into You" is written in a waltz time signature, but talks about a solo slow dance. It's a song about a profound feeling of love that can only exist at this level of intensity because it is not reciprocated. Hopefully romantic and hopelessly fatalistic, of course it is the perfect soundtrack for pretty much any angsty teenage and post-adolescent feeling. Of course they played it on "Daria." Of course they played it on "Gilmore Girls." Of course they played it in ... "Starship Troopers." Of course Jason Bailey, writing for Flavorwire, ranked it first on his list of "The 20 Most Overused Songs in Movies and TV."
Bailey's piece was published in 2013, two decades after the song's release, and he could add plenty more movies and shows-"American Honey," "The Handmaid's Tale," "Riverdale," "Yellowjackets," and, of course, "Euphoria"-to his already extensive list if he ever felt like updating it. But maybe, just maybe, it's time to finally talk about the album it opens, an album full of songs that are similarly ambiguous-effortlessly cool and really, really fucking emotional at once. Oh, and also: Who the fuck were Mazzy Star, anyhow?