From Miley Cyrus Bangers To Bollywood: The Story Behind The ‘Bridgerton’ Season 2 Soundtrack

If you didn’t know by now, Bridgerton is not like the other girls (and by “girls” we mean Regency-era romance dramas). And sure, that comes across fairly early on in how diverse its cast is and how generous its writers are with explicit sex scenes, but the show’s biggest weapon is, actually, its music.

Far from the sometimes-stuffy classical compositions that lull audiences to sleep in the background of the ball scenes and country dances and third-act climaxes used by its predecessors, Bridgerton’s choice in music cleverly bridges the gap between the past and the present. Translating bangers from Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande into stringed-out symphonies that harmonize with the most emotionally-loaded, pivotal plot points, the show gained a reputation after the success of its debut season.

It was a period piece that slapped.

And, as the show readies to launch another installment focused on a new Bridgerton sibling (hello Jonathan Bailey) and a fresh love interest in Simone Ashley’s fiercely independent Kate Sharma, its choice in music is more important than ever. Especially since, this time around, fans are paying attention.

We chatted with Bridgerton’s showrunner Chris Van Dusen and music supervisor Justin Kamps to nail down exactly how they landed on this season’s soundtrack – one filled with Madonna, Nirvana, and Miley Cyrus covers – that Bollywood nod, and approval from Sir Harry Styles.

The string covers were such a hit in season one. Did that influence any choices you made this time around?

Chris Van Dusen: As far as the music, there are more covers this season than last. I think that’s because it worked so well the first time around. The whole intention with these songs is that I want our audience to feel the very same way our characters feel onscreen. So when the Sharmas walk into a ballroom and hear this amazing classical rendition of “Material Girl,” I want the excitement they’re feeling in the moment to translate to the audience, too. I think it’s incredibly immersive and effective, and it’s definitely one of the things I love most about this show.

You’ve both talked about the trial-and-error process of the pop covers in season one. What was the process for season two like?

Justin Kamps: We start early on matching these covers with the type of dance that our choreographer, Jack Murphy, is planning for the ball — which includes tempo, time signature, just general feel, and everything. And then as the show comes together in post, we take another look at these sequences that have sometimes been newly edited together into an actual scene. And [sometimes] we need to look at a different song because maybe it’s been edited in such a way that the song we used for choreography doesn’t fit or there’s a different vibe now that it’s been put together. That’s when we start looking at different covers in the post process and seeing what really fits that moment and that sequence.

So do the lyrics of these pop songs come into play more in post-production then?

JK: Yeah, when it’s into post is where we start having more of the thoughts of like, “Okay, what would make the most sense here? What are the characters feeling? What’s happening in the scene? What’s the subtext? What can we be cheeky with?”

CVD: There are some songs I’ll find in post, but there are also times when I’ll write a scene to a specific song. I wrote one particular scene in the season two finale to a cover of Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball.” It captured the exact emotion I wanted that scene to convey so beautifully. Usually, we end up replacing whatever song we use during shooting, but that was an exception. I asked our choreographer to choreograph a dance to that version of the song. Our onscreen musicians actually played to it on the day, too. The result is magical.

JK: Yeah, for me, that really encapsulates Kate and Anthony and their relationship — how they’re meeting each other and how that blew up everything in their lives.

When choosing which songs to cover, which carries more weight, the lyrics vs. the melody?

JK: There is some room to take a song that maybe the lyrics don’t completely fit, but the melody and the way the strings are performed really works for the scene, but I do feel it is a bit 50-50. Even if you’re not literally hearing them, these are songs that most people know and recognize — you’re hearing the lyrics in your head maybe as the song is happening. So we’re still aware that we can’t totally disregard the lyrics.

CVD: The actual song we’re covering has to make sense for us both emotionally and lyrically. “Dancing on my Own,” [by Robyn] for example, manages to be both beautiful and painful at the same time. It’s the kind of song that makes you lean into your screen. The lyrics are relevant too, especially when you think about what’s really happening in the scene it scores. It’s angsty and bittersweet and soul-stirring. It’s a transcendent moment.

Does the popularity of a song or an artist come into play when choosing which tracks to use?

JK: I do think it’s important. In general, the music that I am pitching down to the show that the producers and Chris gravitate towards are songs that are recognizable. There could be a song that I totally love, and it’s like, “Oh, this is a beautiful string cover of this song that no one’s heard,” but then if no one knows the song, it would play in the show as just score potentially. It would just go by and no one would notice. So the whole reason to use covers in the first place is that it is a song that people recognize and when it comes up, it creates this instant connection between the characters, these characters in the past and the audience in the present.

But this season you did experiment a bit more with how old a pop song could be to still have that reaction when fans heard a string cover of it.

JK: Yeah, we did expand back into some older classics — “Material Girl,” we got Nirvana in there as well. I think that’s just a testament to Chris’ taste and his interest in songs from all eras because again, creating a string quartet version of them levels the playing field. Maybe the original song itself is old, but now this cover is being heard. The audience is now experiencing these songs as a new thing even if they were released in the eighties and nineties.

You’ve both said that the Harry Styles track was the hardest license to get this season. How do you convince artists to hand over their music? Do you have to send them a script, show them the scene?

JK: It depends on the artist. Sometimes artists understandably are protective of their songs. Because this is their creative endeavor and their work and they want make sure that it’s being used appropriately. So yeah, sometimes we do have to show the artist and their team the clip. Other times we just give a detailed description of what’s happening and some people are okay with that. It kind of depends but this season, yes, we did have to show a couple of people.

The show has changed the Sharma’s ethnicity and cultural background this season and a lot of fans are excited for the Bollywood track that’s been included. Why was that such a big deal to cover that song?

JK: I’m personally very proud of the Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham cover. That was another one I was really excited about because when we were looking into including a Bollywood song in the show this season, there was lots of trepidation about Bollywood being a tough clear because they’re very protective of… Those films are a very important part of their culture. I’m just really excited for people to hear it.

CVD: The song itself is about family and the bonds that hold them together. When I heard the original song, I fell in love with it — and I thought it was perfect for a scene featuring all of our Sharma ladies — who have just arrived in London from India. So it’s a nod to that family’s heritage. My writers and I wanted to honor the culture of this new family and weave certain elements of their South Asian heritage into the series.

JK: There’s already been lots of fan excitement. And I actually saw an article with one of the composers that I guess his son told him how popular Bridgerton was, and he was very excited about the song being considered and used in the show. So that warms my heart. And I’m just excited for people to hear this song. I think it’s important that we got that one in there.

Speaking of changes from book-to-screen, were there any that were particularly challenging to make?

CVD: I wanted Edwina to be a multi-dimensional character in terms of having her own wants, needs and desires in the show. It’s always the goal to be writing characters who are fully-realized, complicated, and flawed. And then of course I was always interested in further expanding the beautiful, multi-ethnic world that was set up in the first season. Introducing the Sharma family was very much a part of that.

Netflix’s ‘Bridgerton’ returns on March 25.

Kid Cudi Connects With Jay-Z For Directorial Debut Based On “Pursuit Of Happiness”

Screen Shot 2022 03 22 at 8.07.58 PM

According to a post from his official Twitter page, Kid Cudi revealed he’ll be working on his directorial debut with Teddy, a comedy slated for Netflix later this year.

Based on the Cleveland native’s 2009 hit, Pursuit Of Happiness”, Teddy will not only be directed by Cudi, but the script was also wittten by Cudder, but will also star the “Day And Nite” rapper. The Netflix feature film also boasts Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and LeBron James as executive producers of the film.

Writing a message to his fans via social media, Cudi said, “I added a lot of my own personal struggles and experiences in it, so this film is very close to my heart,” he wrote. “I know that, deep down, this movie will help people the same ways music has… It’s trippy, it’s fun, it’s sad, it’s life.”

Earlier in March, X hit theaters where Kid Cudi plays the role of a ’70s porn star in the film A24 

The post Kid Cudi Connects With Jay-Z For Directorial Debut Based On “Pursuit Of Happiness” appeared first on The Source.

Kid Cudi Will Make His Directorial Debut With ‘Teddy,’ Co-Produced By Jay-Z

Kid Cudi has always been multi-talented, making his acting debut in How To Make It In America the same year he dropped his debut album, Man On The Moon: The End Of Day. His acting career turned out to be no fluke or passing fancy; he’s since gone on to appear in more than 20 feature films including the recently released horror flick X, as well as taking on a slew of roles for TV including his Netflix series Entergalactic and Kids See Ghosts, both of which are currently in post-production.

Now, Cudi will add feature film director to his extensive, growing resume with Teddy, a film project with Netflix that he also wrote and will star in. In a lengthy Instagram post explaining its origin, evolution, and concept. He also thanked the film’s co-producers, who include Jay-Z, James Lassiter, and The Harder They Fall Director Jeymes Samuel (lotta Jameses there, eh?). Jay-Z, of course, executive produced The Harder They Fall with Samuel (aka The Bullitts), while James Lassiter is best known as the co-founder of Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment and also co-produced The Harder They Fall, as well as King Richard.

“This year im directing my first feature film ‘Teddy’ at Netflix which I wrote and will also be starring,” he wrote. “This is a story I started writing in 2013 because I always wanted to write my own movie, so I said f*ck it and started doing it. The road has been long, from it being a tv show for years to finally being a film… I cant wait for u all to meet Teddy, his friends, his family and take a walk in his world for a bit. If I could sum up what the movie is about in one sentence, id say this: It’s as if I took the song ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ and wrote a movie about it.”

So far, there’s no release date for Teddy, but stay tuned.

If A Netflix Series About U2 From J.J. Abrams Is What You’re Looking For, You’re In Luck

Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, TV show me.

A day after Nancy Pelosi said that Bono “has been a very Irish part of our lives,” Variety reports that a series about U2 is in “early development” at Netflix. J.J. Abrams is attached an executive producer through his Bad Robot production company, while Bohemian Rhapsody writer Anthony McCarten is working on the screenplay.

It is unclear at this time exactly how involved U2 would be in the project. Exact plot details for the show are currently under wraps, but given McCarten’s involvement it seems logical to assume that the show would delve into the history of the band.

There’s a lot of history to tell, from the band’s post-punk beginnings in Ireland to releasing one of the biggest albums ever in The Joshua Tree to the Super Bowl performance to Bono’s humanitarian efforts to the day that Edge found his hat. Say what you will about the music (“All I Want Is You” slaps), but it’s impressive that a group as popular as U2 has stayed together for this long with all the original members still in the band.

Of course, this assumes that Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. will, as expected, allow the show to use their music and likenesses. Otherwise, we’ll have another extremely funny Jackie Jormp-Jomp situation on our hands.

What’s your favorite YouToo song? Mine’s “Tuesday Gory Tuesday.”

(Via Variety)

Netflix Tests Out Fees to Crack Down on Password Sharing

Netflix

Then world’s largest streaming service may soon get more (official) subscribers as Netflix announced today that it would begin a rollout to test an initiative that would crack down on illicit password-sharing.

In the past, Netflix had generally turned a blind eye to password sharing. Last spring, Netflix began implementing slightly stricter security protocols, prompting users to re-enter their login credentials, even if they had previously been logged onto a device. However, many viewers found ways to circumnavigate that measure, namely by re-entering their login and password.

This week, Netflix announced that it would be rolling out a pilot program in three markets (Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru). The new “add an extra member” feature would prompt Standard and Premium subscribers to add subsidiary accounts for up to two people they don’t live with, each with their own profile, personalized recommendations, login and password for about $2.99 USD per new account. 

In an official statement on their website, the company explained the basics of the plan as well as the rationale behind the move, saying: “We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans. While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared between households – impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.”

However, Netflix did not provide specific details about what they categorized as a household and how household members would be identified if they were not all on the home IP address (watching at work, at the gym, while traveling, etc.). 

Netflix has not announced any plans to test any similar programs in the United States in the immediate near-term future.

As usual, social media had a lot to say about the proposed initiative.

The post Netflix Tests Out Fees to Crack Down on Password Sharing appeared first on The Source.

The ‘Metal Lords’ Trailer Gives A Shred-Worthy Look At The Netflix Film From D.B. Weiss And Tom Morello

While preparing to make Game of Thrones, a project he never expected to get off the ground, D.B. Weiss wrote a script called Metal Lords that hit the backburner as Thrones became a mammoth juggernaut for HBO. However, once the dragon series concluded its eight season run, Weiss quickly returned to his film about a high school metal band and retooled the script that hadn’t been touched since 2006.

Along the way, he became friends with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. Morello came aboard the Netflix film as an executive producer, but the musician quickly took on the role of a hard rocking advisor as he pushed the actors to fully embrace the metal genre.

“It doesn’t matter the accuracy of your cymbal hits. You just have to go fucking berserk the entire time,” Morello told Billboard. “That’s metal! Don’t worry about the rest. Kick my ass with your facial expressions, which should be, at a minimum, Neanderthal-like and at a maximum, like you’re just in some sort of roiling pain and never stop doing that.”

Here’s the official synopsis for Metal Lords:

Two kids want to start a heavy metal band in a high school where exactly two kids care about heavy metal. Hunter (Adrian Greensmith) is a diehard metal fan —is there any other kind?— who knows his history and can shred. His dream in life is to win at the upcoming Battle of the Bands. He enlists his best friend Kevin (Jaeden Martell) to man the drums. But with schoolmates more interested in Bieber than Black Sabbath, finding a bassist is a struggle.

Metal Lords starts shredding April 8 on Netflix.

(Via Billboard)

Kanye West’s Documentary ‘Jeen-Yuhs’ Is More Mythmaking Than Insightful

With the third and final episode of the Netflix Kanye West documentary Jeen-Yuhs finally available for streaming, the time has come to take stock and determine what lessons can be gleaned from its nearly five hours of behind-the-scenes footage. Did we learn anything we didn’t already know? I don’t think so, but for viewers of a certain age, who maybe didn’t get to watch all this go down in real-time or who were late aboard the Kanye West bandwagon, there is certainly value in watching the come-up, seeing that he always had an oversized ego and the ambition to match. The first two episodes of the documentary also show that the Kanye we know today came from humble beginnings, that he didn’t always have pop culture in the palm of his hands the way he does now.

But by the time the third episode comes around, we see the result of what that level of dominance has ultimately come to. And while director Coodie Simmons, who shot the documentary alongside longtime partner Chike Ozah, refrains from passing judgment on his friend Kanye, the documentary comes across as more mythmaking than insightful. While Coodie and Chike are far from yes-men, they’re maybe a tad bit too sympathetic considering how close they were to Kanye when he was just a guy from Chicago. The problem is, that no one should be as big as Kanye has gotten and do the problematic things Kanye has done without criticism. In Kanye’s own words, “no one man should have all that power.”

I can see how it would be interesting for outsiders to learn how some of the industry works, or to catch a glimpse at the sort of impromptu in-studio listening sessions and recording magic that can happen during the creation of a beloved classic. I’ve always found documentaries to be kind of misleading in that respect because it’s easy to cherry-pick those moments from hours and hours of footage of what in my experience are mostly boring and tedious processes (for a taste of that, just put those 2-minute clips on repeat for about 10 hours). And they can certainly tailor a perspective regarding artists’ relationships, conversations, and personalities for the benefit of the narrative being told rather than the truth of the events being recorded.

But it’s hard for even a grouch like me to deny the tenderness of Kanye’s relationship with his mother, of watching her ease his agitation when he believes he should be signed already, be a star already, be there — in whatever far-flung future he imagined for himself — already. She reminds him not to get ahead of himself, she beams with pride at his accomplishments, she admires his new jewelry, even when you can kind of tell she wants to admonish him for making irresponsible purchases. Her influence on him is undeniable and indelible, and it’s easy to see how her loss could cause such a disturbance for him. She grounded him when his ego threatened to turn him into a hip-hop Icarus; without her, he’s flown too close to the sun and crashed multiple times.

The documentary lets viewers draw this conclusion for themselves, even as most of us had already figured this out just from watching him snatching Taylor Swift’s mic at the VMAs, going through meltdowns on his Pablo tour, donning a bright red Make America Great Again cap to stump for the destructive administration of Donald Trump, and pushing through his own campaign, even as it wore down his relationship with his wife Kim Kardashian and turned him into a possible puppet for a flagging Republican reelection campaign. Because all of this is crammed into the final hour and a half of the documentary, it almost downplays Kanye’s downfalls in favor of focusing on his climb, as if justifying his newfound position just because he worked for it.

That’s cool, but as endearing as it is to watch Kanye interact with his biggest cheerleader, his mom, it’s heart-wrenching to see him in his current state because watching this documentary feels like joining the crowd watching a train wreck. It almost feels like we’ve so reduced this man’s humanity that he can’t even see it in himself. He’s a commodity, he’s an event, he’s entertainment — and in constantly trying to live up to his own capacity for spectacle, he’s lost sight of the kid from Chicago who dreamed of all this before making it come true. He’s become miserly, focused on his money and accomplishments to the exclusion of the people with whom he should be sharing them, he’s become paranoid, lost in the dark twisted fantasy of his persecution complex, and failing to see the beauty of his position. He’s lost his sense of humor and wonderment and humility, the possibility of failure, because he’s now surrounded by exactly the yes-men who don’t mind seeing him set himself on fire (sometimes literally) as long as there’s the potential of entertainment in watching him burn.

Jeen-Yuhs feels like watching him burn. It starts off with a slow spark, a wisp of smoke as he does everything he can to fan the flames, but by the end of episode three, we’re watching a full-on conflagration, the hero that Jeen-Yuhs has spent three hours building up crumble to ash in front of our eyes. At the beginning of the third episode, Coodie mentions being ready to release the documentary at the end of Kanye’s College Dropout era, ahead of the release of Late Registration. To hear him say that explains the first two parts of the doc — and makes you wish that he really had done so, to preserve the old Kanye instead of trying to explain the one we’re stuck with now.