Opshop “Saturated”

2003-opshop-saturatedMost enticingly, the YouTube description says this song was “featured on the hit TV series The Hills“. But “Saturated wasn’t listed on MTV’s official list of all the songs used on the popular scripted reality show, so I’ll never know if it was the Speidi love theme. Actually, given the that the main refrain is “let’s stay up all night”, the song was probably used for a scene where some characters – Speidi, perhaps – stayed up all night.

I did discover a couple of songs from other New Zealand artists that had been played on The Hills. Greg Johnson had “Save Yourself” on ep 208, and two years later Savage was there with “Swing”. And if you count Natasha Bedingfield as New Zealandish, well, she did the series theme song.

My searching also revealed that Opshop had another song on another MTV show. “One Day” was on episode 213 of 16 and Pregnant, where “Emily faces the pressure of starting over in a new school and new town” among other things.

Anyway. Back to the lecture at hand. The “Saturated” video is Jason walking along a beach, and that’s basically it. It’s shot in several continuous bits, with edits to show the passing of time or to change the action happening on the sandy ground behind him. There’s no sign of the rest of the band, letting Jason be the face of Opshop.

It’s just all regular beach activity – a dude hooning on a dune buggy, a couple strolling, a dog playing (Jason throws him a stick), a couple of surfers and a bit of beach cricket.

Sometimes the lighting makes it look like Jason has been superimposed on a beachy background, but as he replied to an accuser on YouTube, “I was definitely at the beach. true story.” And when you think about it, filming it in a studio would be a lot trickier than doing it for real.

It turns out all the walking has a purpose. Right at the end, as the sun is setting, he walks up and there’s a lady. His body language is all “Sorry I’m late. Do I still get a shag?” Oh, so that’s why all those people on NZ Dating put “long walks on beaches” in their profile.

Best bit: the impressive one-handed dive catch from a beach cricket player.

Next… can’t stop, won’t stop.

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