‘My kids’ friends wear Smelly Cat T-shirts’: TV insiders on creating unforgettable onscreen songs

From Lisa Kudrow’s comic ditty in Friends, to the supposedly world-defining music of Daisy Jones & the Six, writing songs for television characters isn’t easy. Just ask the brains behind it … Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 novel Daisy Jones & the Six was practically made for television: charting the rise and fall of a 70s rock band that bears more than a little similarity to Fleetwood Mac, it’s filled with secret affairs, cocaine-fuelled fights and a cast of cool, stylish characters. There is one problem in putting it on screen, though: the music. In Jenkins Reid’s book, the Six are painted as one of the defining rock bands of all time, an overnight success story that went on to redefine popular music. How, exactly, do you go about writing songs that good? For a music supervisor – the crew member charged with finding the right musicians to bring the fictional Best Band of All Time to life – it’s an uphill battle. Frankie Pine, music supervisor for Amazon’s recent adaptation of Daisy Jones, says she wasn’t hung up on finding musicians who could achieve the impossible task of recreating, say, Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams. Instead, she sought to find someone who could make a record that sounded convincingly 1970s. Continue reading...