What Was That Awesome Song From Breaking Bad’s Mid-Season Finale?

An article by Jared Smith   

Hopefully the Mayans were wrong about the world ending in 2012, or else we’ll have no idea what becomes of our favorite meth dealer Walter White, ahem, Heisenberg. Sunday marked the explosive mid-season finale, which picks back up next summer with eight final episodes.

Toward the end of the episode, we were treated to a montage five years in the making. Mr. White has finally made it BIG, creating a world-wide drug empire thanks to his legendary blue meth. The montage was soundtracked by the perfectly placed “Crystal Blue Persuasion”, recorded by Tommy James and the Shondells and composed by Eddie Gray, Tommy James and Mike Vale.

It’s unlikely that “Crystal Blue Persuasion” would refer to “crystal meth” because before 1970, meth was in white pill form, and not the crystal version popular today. James says he got the song idea from the Bible:

“I took the title from the Book of Revelations in the Bible, reading about the New Jerusalem. The words jumped out at me, and they’re not together; they’re spread out over three or four verses. But it seemed to go together, it’s my favorite of all my songs and one of our most requested.”

This isn’t the first time “Crystal Blue Persuasion” has invaded pop culture. The low-tempo hit has appeared in films A Walk on the Moon (1999), The Secret Life of Girls (1999), Zodiac (2007), The Nanny Diaries (2007), and How to Make it in America (2010). It was also used in the pilot episode of the television series The Wonder Years, the episode “Back to Where You’ve Never Been” (2012) from the television series Fringe, and an Estee Lauder commercial.