CNN
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Of the many dark gifts that Showtime’s creepy hit series The Yellow Jackets brings us, the juiciest this season is by far the music.
The show, which follows a troupe of teenage soccer players stranded in the Canadian wilderness of the 1990s after a plane crash and the respective adult personalities of today’s survivors, is filled with nostalgia, including long-cherished tunes from the turn of the last century. with clips from Tori Amos, early Smashing Pumpkins, Massive Attack, Veruca Salt and many more.
On Sunday’s episode of ‘Yellowjackets’, alternative rock queen Alanis Morissette will feature a version of the show’s theme song ‘No Return’ and has already released it as a single.
One of the most unexpected and successful uses of retro music came in the first episode of season two last month, when W*rren Cole’s Jeff spent time in the car after an intense date with wife Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) during which he rocked. stumbled upon “Last Resort” by Papa Roach (of course, the track actually came out in 2000, but that doesn’t detract from its retro vibe).
In an interview with CNN, the show’s music director Nora Fielder explained that Papa Roach’s selection of songs was scripted and “provided the perfect physical outlet for W*rren, whose anxious feelings were running high as he sat alone in his garage.”
However, there are other standout moments in the script that she has to interpret, and Fielder relishes the opportunity to match those moments to the right songs of the period.
“I dive back into the era of the show and the zeitgeist as I start compiling my playlists for the show,” she said. “The main thing I try to remember is to just stay true to history and let it tell me what it might need musically.”
A case in point from the same episode is the placement of Amos’ signature track “Cornflake Girl” from her groundbreaking 1994 second album Under the Pink.
The song, which appropriately features the lyric “Everything’s getting nasty,” just as teenager Shauna (Sophie Nelisse) is about to swallow something unthinkable, “came to Fielder’s mind pretty quickly as a possibility.”
“I felt that Amos’s lyrics could serve as a suitable launching pad for the finale of the first episode – not only as a reflection of the state of mind of young Shauna,” she noted, “but also as a reflection of the past and present mood and mentality that she experiences. other Yellow Vests characters in the second season.”
Fielder’s work is complex in the sense that often at some point in each script there is a perfect wish list for a song, which can then change either due to something technical or because the needs of the scene change during production as the result of many elements, including the acting.
“Everyone on the team always wants to pick the best song to improve the story,” she said. “When we get into publishing (production), a common question that comes up among us as we work together is simply, “Do you think we can beat this?”
Fielder says that during this collaborative process, she “doesn’t believe there’s an exact roadmap for how to connect songs to any particular scene or story.”
“I always say, ‘Let the painting tell you what it needs.’ (Something like the Wilderness, I guess?)
Another moment that pairs perfectly with the music playing is the infamous “last dinner” scene from last week’s second episode, which features Radiohead’s “Climbing By The Walls” from their mind-blowing 1995 album OK Computer on the soundtrack.
“The song seems to be one of those unspeakable monsters that can live in the head,” Fielder noted, referring to the strange collective hallucinations that the group undergoes while devouring one of their own. “I can’t think of a better way to obsessively punctuate (this) scene, also known as the ‘feast’.
To understand just how important music is to the specific ambient feel of The Yellow Vests, one has to look no further than the super creepy Season 2 trailer for a show in which Florence + The Machine delivers an exceptional and haunting rendition of No Doubt’s timeless 1995 hit:Just a girl.”
“I’m a big fan of The Yellow Vests and this era of music, and this song had a particularly strong influence on me growing up, so I was thrilled to be asked to interpret it in a ‘deeply disturbing’ manner for the show. “the band’s lead singer Florence Welch said in a statement broadcast to CNN.
“We tried to really add some elements of horror to this iconic song to match the tone of the show. And for a man whose first musical love was pop punk and Gwen Stefani, it was a dream job.”
Due to her collaboration with the Yellow Vests, Morrisette was also inspired by the show.
“I see parallels between ‘Yellowjackets’ and my vision while writing songs: sheer intensity, jugular vein craving with no fear of the obscene,” Morissette said in a statement. “My whole career I have strived to support the empowerment of women and sensitive people and to see the world through a feminine lens, and what’s great about this show is that each character is allowed to be dynamic and complex rather than oversimplified, downsized. women’s versions. I am honored to be part of the Yellow Vests legacy.