No Pads special #4: The most heavily featured Simple Plan album in TV & film

It is said that no other era in the film industry has probably produced more teen-oriented movies – usually comedies or romantic comedies – as the 2000s. And not only did these movies help many young actors such as Lindsay Lohan or the Olsen twins into stardom – they were also pretty good at popularizing new bands through their soundtracks, especially from the pop-punk scene. Looking back – it was actually pretty hard to find a teen movie without one of your favorite bands on it. And that was all the more reason to watch it, right?

With Simple Plan’s first album’s themes revolving around the struggles of teenagehood, parents’ disapproval, heartbreaks and other similar adolescent topics that everyone can identify with once they hit the “teen” mark; it is no wonder that film executives felt these songs were absolutely perfect for teen movies, which dealt with the same kind of troubles. It is therefore not very surprising that songs from No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls are still to this day Simple Plan’s most prominently featured songs on TV & film soundtracks – appearing in at least 14 films or TV series’ episodes. No other of their follow-up albums has received such recognition in broadcast media as their debut album.

While you can certainly look at the whole list of soundtracks Simple Plan have ever been featured on in this section on SimplePlan.cz, today we’re gonna look specifically into the No Pads songs in this article.

Out of all the movies and TV shows that Simple Plan’s music has been featured on, not one stands out more prominently than the Scooby-Doo franchise. Most of us will of course remember the self-titled theme song for the animated TV series ‘What’s New Scooby-Doo?’ (2002) which is still one of the most well-known Simple Plan songs, yet many people still only now keep finding out it is them who were behind it. And it wasn’t just the theme song that ‘What’s New Scooby-Doo?’ featured – in various episodes, fans would be able to find songs such as ‘The Worst Day Ever’, ‘I’d Do Anything’ and ‘You Don’t Mean Anything’. Two of those were featured in an episode called ‘Simple Plan and the Invisible Madman’, which also includes all of Simple Plan as animated characters, involved in the plot of the story. Simple Plan’s songs were not only featured heavily in the Scooby-Doo TV series, but in the live-action movies as well. ‘Grow Up’ was present in the soundtrack to ‘Scooby Doo’ (2002) and its sequel ‘Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed’ (2004) featured ‘Don’t Wanna Think About You’. The second movie’s premiere was also a part of the storyline of the music video for this song.

But which Simple Plan song overall has been the most used in TV & film soundtracks? Well… if you think about it, it’s not that hard to figure it out. Teen movies and Simple Plan – it’s just a given that a song with a title like ‘I’m Just A Kid’ must be in the forefront. And it is – in total, Simple Plan’s first single was used in at least three movies (The New Guy, Grind and Cheaper By The Dozen) and one TV series (Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide). It is also the first mentioned film, The New Guy, that ‘I’m Just A Kid’ owes a lot of publicity to. And not only did the song appear in the movie, some of the actors from The New Guy, such as DJ Qualls or Eliza Dushku also then made a cameo in SP’s music video for ‘I’m Just A Kid’.

Other Simple Plan singles from No Pads have also been featured on multiple soundtracks – ‘I’d Do Anything’ can be found in ‘The Hot Chick’ and also a slightly different version of it was used as he theme song of the second season of the TV series ‘Maybe It’s Me’. ‘Perfect’, on the other hand, seems to have been featured in only one movie – the Lindsay Lohan teen comedy – ‘Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen’.

But it wasn’t always just the popular singles thay managed to make their way on TV. Some lesser known No Pads tracks have surprisingly done that also. The Worst Day Ever was for example featured in the pop-punk filled soundtrack to Clockstoppers (2002) and When I’m With You was one of the songs you could sing-along-to in a 2002 episode of ‘Smallville’ (a show that had two more Simple Plan songs from SNGA play on it in the following years).

Now obviously those two songs were featured on the actual No Pads album, so their presence in broadcast media isn’t perhaps that surprising. But what about the b-sides? The songs that aren’t featured on the official album (maybe just on their special edition)… Did these tracks ever get their chance in the spotlight? The answer is yes, of course!

One of the early Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans movies – The Perfect Score (2004) features Simple Plan’s ‘Crash And Burn’ and ‘My Christmas List’ is in the Christmas comedy movie Unaccompanied Minors (2006). But the most prominent appearance of a Simple Plan b-side is definitely ‘Vacation’ in the Olsen twins’ movie ‘New York Minute’ (2004). When the song appeared in this movie, it has only been performed by the band live at that point (as we know, it was a part of the original No Pads setlist) – it was never introduced on any of their records, not even as a bonus song. Yet, paradoxically, it is often named as the song that introduced Simple Plan to many of their fans.

Even Simple Plan’s cover songs have received quite the publicity in some pretty well-known movies, despite not being the original versions. The 2005 Marvel movie Fantastic Four starring Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and more includes Simple Plan’s version of ‘Surrender’, a popular song originally by Cheap Trick. Similarly, the creators of another hit movie, Freaky Friday (2003) with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee-Curtis, decided to use a Simple Plan cover – but this time around in an original way. The film starts off slowly with a nostalgic mothers-and-daughters-through-history collage with the original 60s version of ‘Happy Together’ by The Turtles and as soon as the 2000s teenager comes into the picture, the song changes into the rockier Simple Plan cover of this song.

Have you discovered Simple Plan through any of their soundtrack appearances? Which song was your “gateway drug”? Let us know in the comments below!