Two Songs Stranger Things Will Absolutely Sync
Nora Felder has almost single-handedly taken the music supervisor out of the technical Emmys and into the spotlight. She also really likes late-period Clash.
I’ve never seen Stranger Things, because it’s not made for me: it’s made for my kids. The show’s whole deal is to deliver PG-13 content, because PG-13 was such a specific moment in Generation X’s childhood, and the films that prompted the MPA to create the rating in the first place (mostly Spielberg’s) are embedded in our psyche like the frayed VHS boxes and various outmoded ephemera Stranger Things incessantly showcases. I get all the vexed hand-wringing about whether this is art, or a shameless pilfering of the past to prop up thin writing, or some kind of flash-card dopamine rush for the doomscrolling generation to decode “references,” but I’ve only ever been interested in Felder’s choices as a music supervisor, for how they impact popular culture, and I suppose because I might have chosen differently.
My oldest daughter tells me Stranger Things starts in 1982 and is currently in 1986, which happens to be a year I spent a great deal of time unpacking as a music critic. It seems that this season they’re repeating the tactic of dialing back the breakneck music cues in favor of dramatic heft, which is fair enough and also explains why “Running Up That Hill” blew up the way it did. It was paired with (arguably) the season’s biggest moment, and the media might have been suffering from low-grade Stranger Things ennui, forgetting how many millions of kids watch (and repeatedly rewatch) this show.
At some point, Stranger Things will end. It may all end tomorrow, or it could go on forever, a canceled man once sang. My guess is as good as yours, but if Stranger Things ends in the 1980s, I’m convinced it will bow out on a particular song. Going on the choices Nora Felder has made thus far, and the number of ‘80s songs that have already been denuded of cultural value by their association with other films and shows, I think it’s going to be “Under the Milky Way,” by the Church. Yes, it was briefly in Donnie Darko but that’s precisely the point: that’s a film Stranger Things is hugely indebted to, and moreover, it essentially launched the consideration of music supervision as a culture driver beyond soundtrack albums, via the global success of its version of “Mad World” (check out Manish Raval’s credits). I see “Under the Milky Way” as a potential will-the-circle-be-unbroken moment not just for Stranger Things, but for prestige TV and music supervision’s golden years, which are quantifiably ending.
I could venture any number of guesses as to what other Modern Rock classics might turn up as Stranger Things encroaches on my teenage years. “Fascination Street”? Maybe the Cowboy Junkies’ version of “Sweet Jane”? Apart from an incongruous and overlong cue in the 2012 Denzel Washington disaster flick Flight, and a brief appearance in languishing critical darling Halt and Catch Fire, that one’s been essentially dormant since Natural Born Killers. Peter Murphy’s “A Strange Kind of Love,” from Deep, is another dark horse option as a ballad, but he might be canceled. It’s hard to keep track anymore.
Taking into account everything Nora Felder has chosen thus far, there’s one song I’m absolutely convinced will appear on Stranger Things at some point in the future: “So Alive” by Love and Rockets.
Yes, Yellowjackets used it (her again), but nobody watches Showtime. And the fact that they used it more than likely means it’s going to be available whenever Stranger Things needs it, because smaller shows will be scared of looking redundant (or worse, cribbing from JM). There are few songs this timebound to the late-’80s while simultaneously evocative and squarely PG-13 that aren’t “Wicked Game,” and at that point you might as well sync the theme from Twin Peaks. It’s screamingly obvious how well “So Alive” will slot in as Stranger Things begins dealing more directly with awkward young romances, just like it did for so many of us — and I suspect Nora Felder — in 1989.