Earlier this week, I watched the pilot episode of Alias. Yes, that Alias – the one that began airing 22 years ago and ran for 5 seasons and was a pretty big hit and launched the careers of two bonafide movie stars and featured a cast of very well known supporting actors. So yeah, I finally got around to checking that out lol.
Turns out it was a very good pilot with more artfully executed twists and turns in 69 minutes than most thriller movies pull off in 2.5+ hours. Aside from the clothes and hair and technology, the show felt surprisingly modern — with the kind of editing and writing and acting that we've come to expect from big, prestige TV shows. I will watch more of it and I hope that quality holds up beyond episode 1!
Anywho, I’m writing about Alias because I wanted to share a little web search rabbit hole I went down after watching the episode. In the third act there is a lovely song that plays under a big, emotional funeral scene (sorry for the spoiler, but it’s a show about a spy so you should expect some death and destruction). As I often do when I hear a song I like on the telly, I go to the search box on my computer and type “soundtrack” with the name of the show and episode number.
Here's what happened next:
- I learned that it’s a song called Dust by Ben West
- I searched Apple Music and Spotify and didn’t find the song :(
- I found a YouTube video with the song made by a random fan of the song (it even has the classic “No copyright infringement intended” in the description)
- I was surprised to find that the YouTube comments were shockingly helpful! From those, I learned that Dust was added to the streaming version of Alias to replace a Peter Gabriel song (Here Comes the Flood) which presumably had some streaming rights issues. I ALSO learned that Dust was nominated for a Daytime Emmy in 2012 when it was written for General Hospital. What!?
- Nope, the Wikipedia page for the 39th Daytime Creative Arts Emmy Awards says that Dust WON the damn Emmy! It was credited to Benjamin West and Robert Howard Hartry each as composer and lyricist. This confused me because there’s only one vocalist on the track … at least that my non super spy ears can hear.
- Robert Howard Hartry seemed like a Google phrase that would yield more results than “Ben West”, but in fact it returned even less useful content.
- Searching for Benjamin West instead of Ben West yielded two new pages that seemed pertinent (his IMDB page and All Music pages – both with a decent number of credits).
And that’s where the trail kinda ran dry...
So to sum up: Ben West (or Benjamin West and Robert Howard Hartry) wrote a pretty great song while doing a job and that song was rewarded with an Emmy and the praises of Prue126 on YouTube, but that song has effectively been relegated to further obscurity by not appearing in places people expect to see it. I suspect there's some weird contractual rights nonsense that keeps it off streaming platforms, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a bummer.
The whole thing is kind of like the music version of James' Cool URLs Don't Die. In 2023 it seems inconceivable that a song wouldn't just instantly be available to stream whenever you want it. On the other hand, I did enjoy my little internet spelunking mission and that wouldn't happen without some random missing songs. It's like a little puzzle that only me, thousands of people on YouTube, and anyone reading this post will ever enjoy (I guess I won't presume that you will enjoy this post).
If anyone out there knows more about Ben(jamin) West, hit me up! And if not, please enjoy the song on YouTube before it gets DMCA’ed and also watch Alias Season 1, Episode 1 streaming on Disney + right now.