Welcome to The Sims 2! Part 42

Greetings, Sims Fans!

Where, but in The Sims 2, will you find a Social Bunny or an invisible Shrink when the going gets tough? The Sims 2 is, without a doubt, the funniest, quirkiest and most eccentric game that your gaming dollar can buy – a fact we're all extremely proud of. So when it came time to set the game to music, we looked for talent that shared our particularly skewed outlook on life, simulated or otherwise. An unspoken guideline during this process was, if we could find someone with a history of donning flowerpot headgear, our search was over.

Enter Mark Mothersbaugh...

Mark's music career spans more than thirty years, way back to 1972 when he first formed the electro-pop ironist oddity, Devo. The fact that a band as immediately unique and strange as Devo met with some real serious commercial success in the 1980's with hits like "Whip It" draws some obvious parallels to The Sims, which came from out of nowhere and went on to reap a whirlwind of critical and financial accolades, much like the boys of Devo. Of course, when you continually craft gorgeous pop gems, it hardly matters if you dress your band members up as potatoes, which they did for 1982's Oh No! It's Devo! album.

What most people don't know about Mark is that he has been largely eschewing the limelight for the last decade or so to focus instead on a prestigious and lucrative career as a film and television composer. You can hear his handiwork all over the place, popping up in kid-friendly shows like Pee-Wee's Playhouse, or the Nickelodeon hit, The Rugrats. Mark has also crafted some amazing adult-themed scores for indie-film auteur Wes Anderson's films Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, provided the audio accompaniment for Adam Sandler's ode to goofiness, Happy Gilmore, among others.

Mark, thanks for lending us your particular brand of unhinged genius for The Sims 2! We couldn't be happier with the music!

So in anticipation of the impending release of The Sims 2 we'd like you to get yourself in the mood by listening to this track that Mark wrote for the credits of the game over and over and over again, while you daydream about all the endless hours of fun you'll have once The Sims 2 hits store shelves. I like this track as it really captures the quirky, fun feeling of playing The Sims 2.

This track is particularly important for The Sims 2 team, since it's such a happy, bouncy track. It's impossible to hear this piece of music and not be filled with joy, especially when you listen to it playing over the credits. Watching all those names scroll by, it really hits home that the game is complete and that a team of well over 100 extremely talented people worked their tails off ceaselessly to bring it to the screen of your PC. Mark's music really drives home the sense of accomplishment we all feel – not to mention the party atmosphere that has now descended on the office!

Ahh, jeez...I gotta go. I'm getting all misty.

Whip It Good!

Lucy Bradshaw

The Sims 2 Executive Producer

P.S. How many of you have been tracking The Urbz, our upcoming Sims console game? Well, if you haven't seen it yet, head to The Urbz Website ( http://www.theurbz.com ) to get a brief rundown on what happens when the Sims hit the city....and why am I bringing this up, you ask...well since we are on music-related news, I thought it would be cool to note that the hip-hop megastars the Black Eyed Peas are going to be providing music and more to The Urbz: Sims in the City. The Peas are dropping a new album, Monkey Business, in November, which is coincidentally when The Urbz will be hitting stores as well. As part of the deal, new versions of nine of the songs on Monkey Business will be re-recorded in Simlish for the game, and the Peas themselves will appear as characters in the game! How cool is that!!?