Chasing Cars - the lazy TV hack byword for 'emotional'

Also a real bugbear of mine. Please add, if you will..

Ready to Go - Republica
I Like the Way You Move - Bodyrockers
Unbelievable - EMF

There is a Song2 replica that does the rounds that very nearly sounds like it. There is also a bass-heavy tune that it is very close indeed to Fleetwood Mac's The Chain, which is required for all motor sport.

al la paris texas for anything atmospheric

variant -clapton like guitar mimicing edge of darkness TV series from 1985

on holiday programmes, for shots of Rick Stein gazing out to sea, etc.

Anything to do with, er, money.

For those inevitable and contrived triumph-over-adversity moments in all your favourite Reality shows. A great song though, deserves better...

Much loved by editors and directors of 'lifestyle' programmes. Often heard over shots of beach apartments in Spain or made over back gardens in Scunthorpe. Original version only heard on TV stations with blanket argeements for music. Other stations had to do with one of the thousand of copycat versions knocked out by library music providers.

All the way to 2012 and beyond I'm afraid

Obviously, they are going to win this time - but just in case they don't - and they have to show slo-mo shots of missed penalties, Rooney getting red-carded, John Terry's tears, Capello's downcast look...as Lineker's says "And it could all have been so different.."

What's the exit music going to be? "The Man Who Can't be Moved" by The Script?

http://open.spotify.com/track/586SWMAwcR753dDyZnx8J3

seem to be using Kasabian over everything at the moment.

You couldn't spend five minutes watching TV without hearing Dry Your Eyes by The Streets

by The Ting Tings, Used when anything "sassy" is occurring. Or something involving somebody under 21 and/or female. Or anything else in the world.

but Radiohead's more obtuse moments are frequently used as a music bed on trailers for programmes about such things as serial killers, child molesters and deadly viruses.

clips on cooking and gardening programmes whole montages will use 3-4 seconds of several elbow or keane all jumbled up. The Nigel slater show was doing it the other days, Nigel moves from sink to stove cue butchered snippet of a song about a painful break all while Nige is washing his spuds.

Football, any standard, Sky.....'Alive & Kicking'.

gurls, etc. Anytime anything with a hint of 'girl power' comes on.

...I've only been guilty of one; I used Unbelievable for a reprise of that UEFA Cup final in 2001. Liverpool beat Alaves 5-4 in a quite ridiculous game. I am partial to a bit of Royksopp, though, which no-one has mentioned.

Teardrop

For creeping menace. And it is the theme to House as well.

No one's mentioned Elbow's One Day Like This. It was all over everything last year. A brilliant song, but the sheer laziness involved in its constant re-use was staggering. Other anthems are available.

Born To Be Wild - anything on wheels from Harleys to mobility scooters

just have to be accompanied by REM's Everybody Hurts.

...used as backround music whenever something vaguely rock 'n' roll is supposedly happening on screen (and probably cheaper to use than Brown Sugar by The Stones too)

Gold - Spandau Ballet
Time of Your Time - Green Day

Fade To Grey or Vienna
Midge Ure is probably quite happy with the royalties

.. is usually accompanied by Nick Drake's Cello song. Other selections from his catalogue are becoming tediously overexposed too.

The run of stuff that used Coldpay's The Scientist or Clocks a couple of years back

I also remember that Oxygene4 was damn near ubiquitous in the 1970's when anyone woanted something faintly modern and sciency (Where There's Life with Miriam Stoppard, anyone?)

Wake Up has been popping up a fair bit on TV during big moments since the BBC used in an ad campaign a few years ago. It's always the section after "I guess we'll just have to adjust..."

Any and all versions of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (Shrek, One Tree Hill, The OC, etc. etc)

for anything to do with fashion or ladies walking anywhere.

and the worst of them all:

Simply The Best - Tina Turner