The Spider-Man 2 Soundtrack Almost Featured A Different Dashboard Confessional Song
Before the greatness of "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home" came along, the peak of Spidey cinema was undoubtedly Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man 2." The widespread acclaim for this award-winning film was due to a number of factors. For example, there were stellar performances from the cast including Tobey Maguire and Alfred Molina, next-level special effects, and an engaging script that skillfully balanced comic book superhero action with emotional, character-defining stakes.
Many millennials (especially those who would consider themselves as part of the Van's Warped Tour audience) may also fondly remember the soundtrack as one of the many reasons that "Spider-Man 2" is regarded as one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. Featuring bands like Yellowcard, Taking Back Sunday, Midtown, The Ataris, and Hoobastank, the album reached the top 10 of the US Billboard 200 chart and the number 1 spot for Billboard's US Soundtrack Albums chart in 2004.
Headlining the certified gold record was emo music's poster boy Chris Carrabba and his band Dashboard Confessional. As the single for the album, their song "Vindicated" reached top 50 slots in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada while sitting at the number two spot on the Billboard Alternative Airplay rankings in America. However, things almost went very differently — that now-hit song wasn't originally supposed to be a part of the soundtrack at all.
The good fight
When Carrabba was first asked to contribute a song to the "Spider-Man 2" soundtrack, he provided a song called "I Need A Sure Thing." Although, he had second thoughts about it one day while on tour with Dashboard Confessional in Hawaii. In an interview with The Ringer, the singer-songwriter revealed that he wrote "Vindicated" in 15 minutes while having his morning coffee before getting ready to go surfing with his bandmates on their day off.
Though this new song wasn't specifically about Marvel's friendly neighborhood web-slinger, something about it and its themes appealed to the musician enough that he called the Sony Pictures executive that was working on the album. At first, she said that it was too late to swap songs on the album. But once she allowed him to play the song for her, she changed her tune pretty quickly. The band recorded a demo the next day, it was chosen as the single the following day, they were on their way to record the track the day after that, and the rest was history.
As for "I Need A Sure Thing," it was never officially released on any of Dashboard Confessional's albums. There was a time when they would play it on tour, but that's no longer the case. Instead, it just exists as a lone video on YouTube. Meanwhile, "Vindicated" lives on in our hearts, our iPods, and over the credits of Maguire's second outing as the legendary wall-crawler. Also, in your wardrobe if you were lucky enough to snag one of Super Yaki's amazing shirts celebrating the record.