Do you have any creative rituals or routines?
When I have to do bigger searches, bigger montages and credits, I usually do them at night and really get focused. During the day there’s so many fires and paperwork to get done and everything needs to get done so fast. And so to really really get in it I need quiet time and gummies always help. At night usually there’s a gummy involved that really helps with the focus and really be able to get into creative.
What have been some standout placements for you?
For Euphoria there were so many exciting placements that I felt so good about. I think the Air Supply in episode two of Euphoria was a really fun placement that was so out of the blue and juxtaposed what was happening in the show. The Megan Thee Stallion in the premiere was really exciting because it was way before she popped and we were really excited to get in there first. We had the Dodgr song which was a brand new unreleased song that was in the end credits [episode 6] and got something like 13,000 Shazams or something crazy like that within the first couple hours of airing - that was really cool. Having ROSALÍA was exciting. Episode 6 was such a music intensive episode - it was the halloween party. Being able to figure out and put together that puzzle along with my editor Laura so that it wasn’t wall to wall trap music because your ears kinda get tired and being able to give that party scene a lot of dynamics was really fun. We were all super late in the editing room trying so much different music to make it work. The last season of The Resident on Fox for the season finale we put Billie Eilish in the season finale at the top and in the end of the episode and this was before she really exploded so it made a very very very special episode and a special placement. Dispatches from Elsewhere on AMC with Jason Segel we got to have a lot of fun with because there was no popular music in it. Really digging through the crates and finding some really old school type of songs and undiscovered gems - that’s a really fun part of my job. I’m looking forward to everybody seeing Umbrella Academy because obviously music is such an important part of that show and there’s so much really fun music this season.
*On winning a Guild of Music Supervisors Award for Best Music Supervision - Drama for Euphoria back in February*
To be recognised by my peers for that show, because it was a very very difficult show, it meant so much but overall just being a part of that show was super super special.
Working with directors, how collaborative is the process for choosing music between you and the director?
Overall I think music supervision is a very big collaboration with a lot of people. I’m very lucky that I work with so many incredible editors and there’s a lot of collaboration there as well but definitely, at the end of the day, it’s the director and the showrunners vision and working with editors to help fulfill that vision. It’s always a collaboration between several people across the board.
Between films and TV shows, how different is the process of scheduling and finding and clearing music between the two mediums?
That’s a great question! TV is very intense because it is very very very fast. The turnaround time is insane and working on a movie, for example I just did the Judd Apatow movie with Pete Davidson called The King Of Staten Island, I was on it from June until the end of last month (February) so it was a very slow process. I like the tempo of TV much better because you get it done and then you air and next episode, next episode. They’re very different but personally I like TV better. I like the insanity, I guess.
TV is very fast, for example I’m working on a show right now and we’re mixing next week and we’re still making decisions about songs and we have to clear them so it’s a lot.
What’s the greatest length you’ve gone to clear a song for use?
In Creed II the director wanted Jaden Smith ‘Icon’ and there was a sample that was not cleared, and it was a sample from Cab Calloway’s song ‘The Hi De Ho Man’ from like 30s or something like that. There were two writers on there that we could not find - I got up one morning and said ‘I have to find these people cause I’m running out of time’. I was using whitepages.com and searching obituaries and finding heirs and using Facebook to put it together. It was very intense to find these people and estates. One of the writers, through his obituary I found his grandson who was a dentist and called him out of the blue and was like “Hi, please don’t hang up. I know this is very strange but are you related? Please don’t hang up again. I work in the music industry. I’m working on the Creed soundtrack..” and I had to say as much as I could to make them think that I wasn’t a crazy telemarketer or something like that. It’s a lot of digging and detective work and when you google something you’re going deep into page 3 and 4. So that was probably one of the most intense clearances but there is another story that I can tell you if you have a minute? It’s actually an amazing story..
I have a lot of friends in the Swedish film industry and one is a music supervisor. It was for a movie that they shot a dance scene with the song by the artist Cassie and it’s called ‘Me & U’. Cassie was like an Aaliyah back in the 90s, and one of the writers Ryan Leslie owned the publishing. None of the publishers had him, he owned his own publishing but what happened was a bunch of years ago he was on tour in Germany and he lost his laptop so he posted something on Youtube which you can watch that said “I will give something like twenty thousand dollars to anybody that finds my laptop and hands it in with all of the data in there” and nothing happened and then it was “one million dollars to anybody that finds my laptop”, and I’m just digging and reading through all of this. And a German mechanic found the laptop in wherever Germany, turned it in and was basically like ‘Yo, I want my million dollars’ and Ryan Leslie said that ‘No, the data, the intellectual property wasn’t on the computer.’ But the German mechanic had it different so he sued Ryan Leslie from the States and he won! Because I guess they were able to prove that no, the data was correct and there was some funny business where Ryan took it to like a you break, I fix. So Ryan Leslie did not have a million dollars so he got all of Ryan Leslie’s assets which included his publishing. It wasn't even for my project, it was for a friend in Sweden. And I was like let me handle this and this is a challenge and it got to the point where I was like ‘I am gonna clear this fucking song. I don’t care.’ I had to end up clearing his portion of the song through the German mechanic’s lawyer and that is probably my most crazy clearance story I have. It’s a fun story.
Where do you go to find new music and artists?
I go everywhere. Spotify, Soundcloud, Instagram, Audiomack, TikTok, Dubsmash, Reddit, everywhere. Anywhere. I’m in a restaurant and I hear something, I’ll Google it or Shazam it and take screenshots. Twitter, artists posting about other artists, and then I work with a lot of amazing licensing people who handle it and send me music.
What project has surprised you the most and given you the most unexpected take-away from an experience?
Definitely Euphoria because it’s a new show in watching, in reading and seeing cuts - it’s not an easy show to watch and to digest and it’s not for everybody. I was so in deep with it, I couldn’t see the light at any point til the end as far as I knew what we were making was very special and very different, but the reaction to the music just blew me away. When it premiered we were sitting there watching Twitter and seeing all the tweets about the music go up and up and up and up to the point where it was unbelievable how much the music resonated with the audience and I didn’t realise.
Atlanta I knew was so special because of having Donald [Glover] involved. Not to say that that didn’t surprise me because all of my projects surprise me and you don’t know until you present it to the world but Euphoria, the connection that people had with the music was just insane and blew me away. It was so exciting to watch every week what people were saying about it.
You started out in PR and you worked with some really cool bands like Nine Inch Nails and Portishead. How has your previous career helped your work as a Music Supervisor?
I started out very early with a company called Formula PR that did the publicity for all of those artists and that’s where I learned everything. I guess it kinda set me up first of all, as I’ve always been independent, never really been in-house anywhere, so being able to continue that and doing it on my terms, running my own company from PR to running my own company here as a music supervisor really prepared me. Going from promotion in PR to licensing and publishing and the film and TV world, knowing what a line producer does, knowing the different cuts and what a background vocal and visual vocal and on cameras and all of that; it was a huge huge learning curve. My first gig here getting into music supervision, I was an intern and knew that I had to start at the bottom and started learning everything. It prepared me as a professional in the industry and I did have connections at labels but they were in completely different departments. Iit was more about being a professional in the industry and understanding more how it works and dealing with artists but on a practical level; it’s a completely totally different job.
What advice would you give to your younger self and others hoping to pursue a career in music supervision?
Number one; intern. Go into an internship, and I think this is why I succeeded. One of the reasons that gave me a leg up is that I understood that this is a business, this is not about making cool playlists and finding cool bands and putting it to picture. The best piece of advice I ever got was learning how to do your own clearance. Interning was how I learned to do my own clearance, taking it upon myself to do a class at UCLA about music supervision, learning about copyright. Understanding that this is dealing with budgets, and negotiations, and figuring out don’t pitch a Rolling Stones song unless you got a shit tonne of money. You could be the coolest kid on the block with the best taste in music but if you don’t know how to clear music and how that works, you’re not going to be successful because you’re gonna pitch music that you can’t afford and you can’t clear and then you’re gonna be breaking people's hearts and not serving the director’s vision, because that’s also what it is. It’s not about my taste, it’s about my director’s visions. For people that want to get into this thinking my job is so cool and all I do is listen to music, that’s absolutely not the case and people need to understand that if they want to get into this business.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
Sleep? Being with my friends, being with my husband, being outside and enjoying LA weather. Having the proper downtime I need to then when I’m working, be razor sharp, uber focused and able to get the job done. I do believe that having down time, taking weekends.. yes, there have been times where I work all weekend and there’s 80 hour work weeks but I do think taking that downtime to step away from everything and enjoy your life and the people around you is very very very important. I have 2 amazing women that work with me now; we are an all-female music supervision shop. If I am working over the weekend catching up on emails and I have to email them ‘ignore until Monday. Do not work on the weekend.’ Making sure that they are having a healthy work/life balance, because if you don’t you’re gonna get burnt out; you’re not gonna be at your best. You’re not gonna be focused and fresh and inspired, you’ll get burnt out, and then your work will suffer.
What is on your bucket list? What do you hope to achieve/do in the future?
There are definitely directors and creators that I want to work with on my bucket list. I got to cross off working with Judd Apatow on a big feature film comedy. I want to do a show in animation - that’s something that I want to learn because it’s totally different. I have a dream list working with artists creating music. I was able to do that with Creed working with A$AP Rocky and some of the other artists, Jacob Banks, creating the songs that were in there. One of the shows called Dispatches from Elsewhere, I got to work with Atticus Ross which was definitely a bucket list composer I wanted to work with. Ludwig Göransson, a composer. Working with somebody like Jason Segel was incredible and I got to do that so slowly but surely I’m knocking this stuff off. To continue to work on projects like Atlanta and Euphoria that not make a difference, but having the music resonate with people.
Which shows/artists are currently inspiring you?
One show that I fucking love that I think is phenomenal - I am so excited for seaon 3 - is this show Dark on Netflix - it’s a German show. I think on every angle, that show is brilliant. The story is crazy good. The music supervisor Lynn [Fainchtein], I bow down to because she’s amazing. Everything about that show is phenomenal. I’m literally counting down the days until season 3 is released. Obviously watch it with subtitles, don’t watch it with dubbing.
What’s in the pipeline for you? What’s coming up next?
I have a show on Amazon we’re in the middle of - I’m not sure when it’s going to be released yet - called The Wild, it’s going to be fantastic. Obviously Euphoria season 2 and Atlanta but also I’m very excited about Umbrella Academy season 2. There is Defending Jacob which is coming out on Apple starring Chris Evans and it’s a thriller based on a book. There’s a new show on AMC that I just got on board a couple weeks ago called Kevin Can F*** Himself and I’m super stoked because Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek) just got cast as the lead and I absolutely love love love her.
I’m very lucky to have two amazing women that are so smart and so dedicated and so focused and have great taste as well, Nicole and Satya - they’re the lifeline.
