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Did no one mention to you that "Strange" was used in the trailer for Greenberg and to soundtrack a climactic scene? Not enough to move the needle as much as Spotify algorithm did but you can hardly say the songs stature hasn't changed in decades. It's where I first heard Galaxie, after all!

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Fair enough - but that film came out in 2010, and there was no effect on streaming of Strange till eight years later… so I think unrelated?

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And its use in the trailer maybe speaks to its "similar" qualities. I am just thinking, algorithms are social constructions and are historical, so (while this would be impossible to actually demonstrate) that something like a movie sync would be in some way internalized by algorithms. Eventually algorithms do start making arbitrary-seeming decisions based on their internal logics and biases, but they are also historically and socially contingent things.

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Or was it an algorithm-driven song title match? Maybe peeps were searching for REM's cover of the Wire song "Strange", and the autoplay default went to Galaxie 500 next?

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If so, I just got a bunch of ideas for new song titles

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I thought I had the cleverest thing to say in response to this post, but apparently not. I was going to say, "that's so weird because my SO was playing 28th Day last night and a song came on and I said, that's just like a Galaxie 500 song! And it was Strange." But, I double checked myself and it wasn't Strange, it was Crazy. So, I guess it's a moot point. (The 28th Day song was Pages Turn). Anyway, been enjoying your substack now I've stumbled upon it!

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