If at any time during your High Fidelity binge, you paused and wondered, What song is that?, that was exactly the point. “Every single song was very intentional,” even the ones playing faintly in the background, music supervisor Alison Rosenfeld tells BAZAAR.com.
For a series with a record shop setting, music-loving characters, and relationships defined by playlists, choosing the right songs to carry the story was no small feat. The team of music supervisors—who also include Manish Raval and Tom Wolfe (Green Book), and Questlove of The Roots—worked with the executive producers, including star Zoë Kravitz, to find the right mix of classics, indie hits, and deep cuts for the Hulu show.
“I think where we ended up is the best mix of an opportunity to feature independent artists and labels that would work in a hipster record shop, but then anchor it with old favorites everyone knows and loves like David Bowie and Prince, and also deeper cuts from big artists like Soft Cell,” Rosenfeld explains.
The result is an eclectic collection of rock, soul, punk, funk, indie, and pop; a kind of playlist on which Luther Vandross coexists with the off-kilter Brazilian artist Serguei, and Aretha Franklin is somewhere between the Beastie Boys and Grateful Dead. “We really want to possibly introduce a younger audience to older favorites but also incorporate hidden gems and newer songs,” Rosenfeld says. The aim was to take the series in a “different direction” than the original 2000 film but still nod to the movie with classics like Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall in Love),” which Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Cherise sings in the finale.
Kravitz was very involved, tapping artists like Janet Jackson, Wings, and Frank Ocean. “Zoë was a really big part of the music selection. She’s got great taste, and she knows a lot about music, and luckily, our tastes overlap a lot. It was sending music back and forth, and being like, ‘This is amazing. Where did you find this?’” Rosenfeld says.
Rosenfeld and her team started pitching songs after seeing the script, sending a range of options to producers, but final picks were usually subject to change. “[With] all projects that we work on, it’s so hard to do it that way just because when you finally see the scene, maybe the pace of it is different than you anticipated or the way the song worked with the scene in your mind isn’t how it works when you actually see it,” she says.
Some songs were already included in the screenplay, like Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and Aretha Franklin’s “Day Dreaming.” But other times, the music supervisors lent their knowledge of obscure music to the script, like the one-of-a-kind David Bowie record in Episode 6 and the vinyl from Greek artist Lena Platonos in Episode 1. For the latter, Rosenfeld shipped her own copy across the country so the cast could film with it. The screenwriters were responsible for the characters’ top five musical picks though.
Considering the collection of songs in the series, there wasn’t much room for a score, but original compositions were made for Rob’s (Kravitz) rock star love interest, Liam (Thomas Doherty). And interestingly enough, that Boyz II Men song he covers early in the season was originally supposed to be another track by the R&B group, but the team had trouble clearing it.
If High Fidelity gets a second season, Rosenfeld is already making note of what music to include. “I’m trying to decide how specifically to answer this question or how vague to leave it,” she says. “I would like to use more new stuff if there’s a second season.” But so far, one artist who sticks out is the ’70s group Fanny, the first all-female rock band to release an album on a major label.
Thankfully, Kravitz shared a full list of every song in the series on Instagram; there’s a Spotify playlist for it too. Tune in below and keep scrolling to find each song individually, listed by episode.
Episode 1
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ASwge9wc-eI
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10
High Fidelity is now streaming on Hulu.
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