Of all the records broken during the Paris Olympics, not all were broken by the competitors: the song played during the closing ceremony has become the most Shazammed track of all time, beating a record previously set during the same Olympics’ opening ceremony. And that, clearly, means not everybody who should’ve seen the movie Drive has actually seen it, because it was a key song in that movie.
The song is Nightcall by Kavinsky, who joined French rock band Phoenix on stage at the ceremony. The song was never a chart-topper following its release in 2010 but if you saw Drive you’ll know it. It also turned up in the movie version of The Lincoln Lawyer and in the somewhat less well-known crowdsourced movie Our RoboCop Remake, and it’s been covered by London Grammar, M Roosevelt and Mitski, and My Vitriol, among many others.
Why the Olympics broke Shazam’s records
The goal of the Olympics, officially at least, is to bring the people of the world together – and this time around it did that twice by getting people to go “what’s that song?” At the opening ceremony the song was the 1977 disco banger Supernature by Cerrone, which has quite the video. And for the closing ceremony it was Nightcall, which you can see performed here.
According to Apple, as reported by EDM.com, Nightcall also set a new record for the most Shazammed song in a single day, with France, Mexico and the US the top three countries for searches during the closing ceremony. Other songs that saw a sharp increase in searches were Phoenix’s Lisztomania and If I Ever Feel Better, both of which were performed in the same ceremony.
For me, though, the musical highlight was Gojira’s spectacular performance at the beginning of the Olympics: you can’t argue with a show featuring severed heads, fire, headbanging, fire, fire and fire after all…
