Universal
One of the most iconic moments from 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World comes when Envy Adams, played by Brie Larson, first appears on stage while singing ‘Black Sheep’ by Metric, a band from Toronto, Canada where the movie coincidentally takes place.
The lead singer of Metric, Emily Haines, posted a video on TikTok this week explaining how that moment all came about. Emily Haines calls it ‘the story of Black Sheep’ and the excitement to talk about this is palpable on her face.
She says in 2010, they received a call from Edgar Wright who was directing Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. He explained how they were making the film adaptation of the graphic novel series and asked if Metric (the band) had any unreleased songs that would be a good fit for Envy Adams and Clash at the Demonhead to sing. Here’s her story:
And here is the full performance from the 2010 film:
It’s not over-the-top to say that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had one of the best film soundtracks of the past 15 years. Though, there were actually two soundtracks released for the film so what I’m saying here is the music in the actual movie was among the best there was over the past 15 years.
For her part, Brie Larson nailed the song on the mic. For a while I didn’t even realize it was Emily Haines of Metric singing and not Brie Larson but that’s on me. It’s also very funny for a band to have a song that’s ‘so them’ that it is ‘almost like a caricature’ of the band. She said it was ‘so Metric’ they couldn’t even put it on their album.
This really was a situation of perfect timing. Had Edgar Wright waited then certainly Metric would have come up with something to do with ‘Black Sheep’ but his request came at the perfect time for all parties involved and the rest was history.
Now, since the recent Scott Pilgrim Takes Off animated show has taken off on Netflix there has been a renaissance of this song as people go back and rewatch the original film for the umpteenth time. I’ve seen nearly unanimous praise of the new animated show which stays true to the tone of the graphic novels. I have say though, I found it a tough watch to get through and I read/loved the books back in the day.