So, I’m not sure if this is an unpopular opinion or an obvious one, but I actually kind of like “That Which Binds Us Through Time: The Chemical, Physical And Biological Nature Of Love; An Exploration Of The Meaning Of Meaning, Part 1.“ (If you want to listen to the entire four-minute version, it’s available on music streaming services and YouTube.) Not saying I’d listen to a whole album’s worth of this material on loop for days, but as a capper to the soundtrack album, it’s an enjoyable listen for me.

This song represents one of the nice little touches that I thought separated Face the Music from a lazier or more conventional way of telling the story. I feel like a lot of screenwriters would have just made this a bad song, like Bill & Ted were just completely flailing late in their career and churning out garbage. Basically making them the stereotype of a one-hit wonder, a band that wasn’t that good in the first place, trying to recapture their early success and failing miserably.

But it isn’t that, at least as I read the scene. It’s weird. It’s experimental. It’s not the kind of thing most people would think of as enjoyable pop music. But it’s not poorly constructed, or even atonal... it shows that over their careers, Bill & Ted have really become virtuosos at a number of different instruments and musical styles, and developed the compositional chops to weave them together in a complex tapestry. And it’s clear in the wedding scene that Billie and Thea, who are themselves experts in all kinds of music, are really digging it.

It reminded me of a chapter in one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, about the musician Kenna. As the story goes, a bunch of musicians and music execs who heard his single “Freetime” really loved it and thought it would be huge, but it didn’t really sell to the general public. The interpretation in the book was that it was a little too “out there” for most people, but people with extensive experience in the industry liked it because they’d heard so much of what was popular already that their tastes tended to be a bit more exotic. Who knows if that’s really true (for the record, I really like “Freetime” too and don’t even think it’s particularly weird, so maybe it was just a fluke and Gladwell oversold the angle for the sake of a good story), but it’s a good parable either way.

Anyway, I’m just glad Solomon & Matheson didn’t take the easy way out and make Bill & Ted hacks or burnouts or whatever, especially since that ground was pretty well trodden by the first 1.9 movies. Instead, they (and the composer of the track, Kubilay Üner) showed that B&T had actually kind of overshot the mark and become excellent musicians, but had lost some of their ability to connect so easily with all types of people. In the first two movies, they suck at music but are instant friends with almost everyone they meet — historical figures, Rufus, Death, God, Station — they pretty much love everyone across all walks of life, and everyone mostly loves them back. At the beginning of FtM, though, they have sunk themselves too much into the music and are not only losing touch with the masses, they’re having trouble connecting with their own wives.

This makes the ending all the more satisfying to me, since it’s at the critical moment that Bill & Ted (as facilitated by Billie & Thea) manage to bring their musicianship into balance with their ability to connect with people on a deep personal level. The “Face the Music” track does a good job of showing this, too — it also contains a lot of different instruments and styles woven together, but with a much more conventional set of rhythms and chord structures that make it something everyone across space and time can enjoy.

OK, that’s way more than I meant to write about this, sorry. Guess I miss my old days of being an English major and analyzing everything to death. TL;DR I still think “That Which Binds Us Through Time” slaps.