Needledrop - Red Dead Redemption 2
D'Angelo loved the Red Dead Redemption series so much so he would visit the Rockstar offices at midnight to play an early version. D'Angelo's music contribution and placement was *spot on*
I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. No spoilers here by the way!
I have played a fair few games in my time - my library of incompleted games grows everytime Steam has a sale on. However, after 3 failed attempts I tried to play Red Dead Redemption (RDR2) and found it a little slow to start, until my undiagnosed ADHD simmered down and I found the patience to learn the pacing of the game… Now it is one of my favourite games of all time. It’s gameplay, narrative and size is impressive in itself, but it’s use of music is second to none and has set a new expectation for how I forsee licensed music creatively used in gaming. Also - D’Angelo. Need I say more?
Let’s split this up:
Red Dead Redemption 2
D’Angelo’s involvement with Rockstar
The Needledrop - “Unshaken”
Credible mentions
1. Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2)
Rockstar’s passion for music inclusion has been an integral part of how they tell stories with their games and Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) is yet another great example of how to use music in modern games. I really have to do this one justice.
Here’s a beautiful poster.
Commercially, RDR2 was a game that cost around $170 milion to make, sold over 50 million copies and it’s first 2 days saw $725 million revenue, surpassing the total Red Dead Redemption sales within two weeks. A clear AAA success.
Artistically, RDR2 was an incredibly well written, well designed and well executed western story in the Red Dead universe set as a prequel to the original. The characters, voice acting and the details given to every aspect of gameplay is world class. This is clearly a passion project as well as a commercial product and the story speaks volumes. If you’ve not played it or you don’t game too much, even if you’re not into western films - get this bloody game and enjoy it. This isn’t some ordinary rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ lootin’ cowboy sim, as much as you can do those things, its reviews and sales surely showcase it is so much more.
Some important aspects of this game. RDR2 uses music to its advantage when scene setting. The way that Rockstar has intertwined the soundtrack with the game is as close to a film sync as you’ll get in a video game.
While playing the game, you spend a lot of time on horseback going between places, and despite there being fast travel options, many of the missions require you to ride there and back and converse with people. This is a great opportunity for character building while engaging the player and also set the difference in pace between escaping the authorities and returning to your camp. They even introduced a nice feature called ‘cinematic mode’ where you can set a marker on your map and your horse rides automatically to it so you can do things like…make a cup of tea.
To summarise: RDR2 is successful, narrative lead, paced well and has lots of horse riding.
(…Well turns out I didn’t do that justice but let’s move on.)
2. D’Angelo‘s involvement with Rockstar
If on the off chance you’ve not heard of D’Angelo, here’s spotify links to Brown Sugar (1995), Voodoo (2000) and Black Messiah (2014).
I’ve been a fan of D’Angelo since day dot and was particularly excited when I saw Black Messiah was released back in 2014. As a multi-award winning artist that has collaborated with some of the greats in the R&B world, I was shocked but excited to recognise his voice in Red Dead Redemption 2. After doing some digging, turns out it was definitely him and there was a deeper story to his involvement in this game:
The company [Rockstar] tests its games as they are in progress, and one singer was particularly eager to try it out. “D’Angelo’s actually a massive, massive, massive fan of the game — more than I ever knew,” says Ivan Pavlovich, Director of Music and Audio at Rockstar Games, the company behind Red Dead Redemption 2 and other gaming hits like Grand Theft Auto.
D’Angelo reached out to Pavlovich through an unnamed intermediary. “He would come in here [Rockstar’s New York city office] and just play the game. We weren’t even talking about doing music,” Pavlovich says. “When D’Angelo comes through, he shows up at midnight, and he’s playing the game until four in the morning. Each time he was just like, ‘it’s incredible.’ It just blows his mind. He’s such a fan. I have never seen someone that excited.”
D’Angelo’s enthusiasm emboldened Pavlovich to ask the singer if he was interested in contributing music to the game. (Though the game also includes singing from Nas, Rhiannon Giddens, Willie Nelson and Josh Homme, most of the score is instrumental.) And when D’Angelo agreed, that gave Pavlovich extra leverage to recruit Lanois to supervise the vocal parts of the soundtrack. “The invitation was, ‘would I write songs?'” the producer remembers. “And then they said, ‘we might be able to hook you up with D’Angelo.’ That’s all it took. I love D’Angelo, and always appreciated those great R&B records he made.”
(For reference, you can see my last week’s post where I speak about Ivan Pavlovich involvement with Rockstar’s music decisions for Grand Theft Auto. )
So if D’Angelo loved this game so much that he took the chance to get involved with it, then why aren’t you booting up a brand new save and ride over to Valentine for a shoot-out this instant?
3. The Needledrop - “Unshaken”
But it wasn’t just having D’Angelo get involved with the soundtrack because he was a big fan of the game. I am interested in exactly how they used this track in the game.
On mission #63 titled ‘Dear Uncle Tacitus’ you’re tasked with riding a horse (no surprises here) back to your camp which is across the map. That’s it.
To set the scene here, you’ve split up from your comrades and looking to return to them and to your camp who you left behind. So much has happened since you have been with the crew that it is a perfect time for your character to reflect. Now, the protagonist (Arthur Morgan) is a man of very few words but impactful nonetheless. By this point, you know how Arthur is feeling even with the handful of phrases he uses and instead he is a largely introspective character with incredible development. So many other musical needledrops from the soundtrack have been progressively slipping into the scenes. They are instilling a great deal of emotion into the story by now too. This ride back to town is an isolated, introspective but powerful addition to the player’s journey in this game.
This is the moment where D’Angelo’s track comes into play. You’re only requirement on this mission is to travel to a destination taking around 8 minutes. When you start the journey, a prompt appears encouraging you to put on cinematic mode so you can sit back for the journey. During this entire time, an extended version of D’Angelo’s “Unshaken“ plays in the background.
Here’s a video of the mission (start this at 0:50 to see it in action)
This is the gold standard for music placements in gaming, in my opinion. Here’s a few reasons why:
Well firstly it’s D’Angelo.
This music inclusion is part of a main mission, that is unavoidable in order to progress the story. Ordinarily I would classify this as a ‘shoehorn’, perhaps even a sin, as close to an ‘advert’ rather than a contribution to the player journey, but it is the very opposite because it is part of the story. Unavoidable, if done correctly, is masterful.
We know from the origins of this contribution that it was authentic in its nature and its accuracy to the emotions of the character is so accurate. These features made this track ergonomic, making the song work so closely with the experience and journey of the game that it almost feels invisible.
Usage of the cinematic mode turned this into a performance as well as a piece of the narrative. Providing its significance is there and clear, making this a performance was a nod to D’Angelo’s passion for the game.
As fantastic as this track is by itself, the way it was presented in this gameplay is iconic. It’s a love letter from music to gaming. A textbook example of how the additional context of the song’s deeper narrative with this placement gave the music such a powerful story. No one can listen to that track without going back to this moment in the game.
For reference, “Unshaken” on Spotify has 37 million plays, and his highest streaming track “Lady” has 72 million plays. Without traditional campaign marketing and a significantly shorter period of time, knowing that this game would approach a whole new audience too, is a fantastic turnout that could have lead to people listening to more of D’Angelo’s music. Hopefully.
This is proof that the music industry can contextualise (and re-contextualise) music when woven into stories, providing it’s done well.
4. Credible mentions
The soundtrack in itself is great despite me having to pick out one aspect of the album. The track “That’s The Way It Is” is an honourable mention that I couldn’t have completed this post and not referenced. To all those who know why that track is worth the mention…
Daniel Lanois is one of of the primary writers for this whole soundtrack. In the vinyl product description, there are more details to this soundtrack:
The Music Of Red Dead Redemption 2 soundtrack was produced entirely by Daniel Lanois, known for producing albums for Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Willie Nelson as well as collaborating with pioneering musician Brian Eno to produce several albums for U2 including the multi-platinum The Joshua Tree. In addition to Lanois' production, the soundtrack features additional vocal performances from a range of artists including D’Angelo, Willie Nelson, Nas, Rhiannon Giddens, Josh Homme, plus an additional track written, produced and performed by David Ferguson.
Having involvement from the likes of Willie Nelson is a fantastic addition to the soundtrack. You can see that in an epilogue mission they use the same idea as they did with D’Angelo’s music, but with Willie Nelson’s track instead. Also, Josh Homme from Queens Of The Stone Age covered this track for the album too. Bit more detail on the album soundtrack is here, and the discogs link here too. Rockstar clearly took care in curating a feel for this album that captures the story and included a great selection of artists.
What I took from this as a music exec
From the music side, authenticity is key. I know ‘authenticity’ sounds like a corporate tag line these days, but maybe it needs to be spotted earlier and better and defined properly too. The origins of this is easily identified when an artist is knocking on a gaming dev’s door at midnight to play early versions. Taking the time to make a feature meld into the narrative seamlessly is the most impressive way to place music with impressive impact, here’s a reddit forum on the “Unshaken“ needledrop that DOES include spoilers FYI.
I believe that the story of this track, the clarity of its meaning and the parallel universe it shares with its part in the game is how music and gaming should communicate. I’d love to see more of these in the world and I’ll be keeping my eye out for it.
From the gaming side, if there was anything I could share is that artists do genuinely want to get involved and no one should avoid these conversations. Both new music, and bringing catalogue music to a new context or audience can both be done well. This is a good example of new music working perfectly, I’ll be writing about how catalogue music can be placed well in the future.
TLDR
Red Dead Redemption 2 is brilliant. D’Angelo loved it, played it with the devs late at night and wrote a track for it. It was used in the game properly, authentically and beautifully, making it memorable and impactful. Did I say D’Angelo was in it? Yeah, that too.