A party scene on a barge where two sisters celebrate their reunification was really crying out for one track – and that track was (naturally enough) Sister Sledge’s ‘We Are Family’. The disco classic was in the cut until (naturally enough) the usage cost of around £30k presented itself…whereupon the search started for a recognisable disco hit, that didn’t cost the earth.
This is the crux of a very familiar problem. If a song is well known enough for many of the audience to recognise it, it is, by definition, going to cost you.
There is, however, a solution and it’s the one that I presented in this instance.
You write a song that most of the audience think that they’ve heard before, or at least their subconscious assumes it was a hit that escaped them.
The song needs to be two things: Well written and authentic.