Sound Tracks

Vampire Weekend is a quartet of Columbia University graduates who are not vampires and do not sing about them. They do, however, sound a lot like what would happen if Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and one or two members of the Walkmen decided to record an album together. Still, we couldn't help but wonder how this mellow mix of indie pop, New Wave, and Afrobeats would work as the soundtrack to vampire movies.

Blade(1998)
On "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa," Vampire Weekend does its best to riff on Paul Simon's Graceland, with singer Ezra Koenig even doing a Simon impersonation while referencing him in the lyrics. This artistic self-consciousness would've greatly benefited Blade's filmmakers, and through the timeless magic of song, delivered the soul to Blade's character that the screenplay and Wesley Snipes' limited acting skills could not.

Horror of Dracula (1958)
The "Oxford Comma," besides being a song by Vampire Weekend, is the comma before the word "and" at the end of a list like this one: "Horror of Dracula (1958) stars Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, and Christopher Lee." Though Horror of Dracula would enjoy a different tone if Dracula's theme featured the indie-pop and falsetto of "Oxford Comma," it has always been a lot more pretentious than the Bela Lugosi Dracula of 1931 and deserves a theme as coolly pretentious as a song named after a punctuation rule.

Vampire in Brooklyn (1995)
Vampire in Brooklyn, a deservedly forgotten Wes Craven horror-comedy starring Eddie Murphy, is, quite possibly, the worst vampire movie ever made. However, with Vampire Weekend's "A-Punk" — a ska-infected New Wave number — Vampire in Brooklyn might have gained a much-needed ironic tone and, consequently, the credibility it never had as just a movie about a vampire with a mullet.