By Courtney E. Smith
This fall Thursday nights will include a block of television shows, spread over three hours, that were all developed by ShondaLand, the company belonging to superstar TV producer Shonda Rhimes.
The first evening of ShondaLand programming begins tonight (Sept. 25) and features the dramas Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and the company’s new franchise, How to Get Away with Murder.
Many things are notable about this, including the fact that a woman (Rhimes) is executive producing so many franchises at once for a major network (ABC). Also unusual in the landscape of TV today is that all three ShondaLand shows are driven by strong female characters. ShondaLand has also teamed up with the network to create the #TGIT—Thank God It’s Thursday—hash tag strategy to help drive Twitter interaction and, in turn, ratings. It’s an unusual development in the world of mainstream TV, to the point that even the New York Times doesn’t seem to know how to talk about this without causing a “furor.”
But even aside from all of that, there’s another factor that sets the series of ShondaLand apart from the rest of the pack: the use of music.
The ShondaLand go-to music expert is Alexandra Patsavas, who has worked with Rhimes since day one of Grey’s and is currently her music supervisor for all three Thursday night shows. Inside the Shondaverse, Patsavas has helped to fill specific aural landscapes dreamed up for each show.
How to Get Away with Murder, created by ShondaLand writer/producer Peter Nowalk, airs its first episode airs tonight (Sept. 25) at 10 pm ET. And musically, it goes where no other ShondaLand show has yet gone: into the world of EDM.
“I wanted the show to sound fresh, young, edgy,” Nowalk said, by way of explaining his editorial choice. “I also wanted the music to have a fast-paced, driving energy that would match the pace we were plotting our stories. Electronic music hit the mark on all levels.”
None of the tracks used in the first episode of Murder have lyrics, which itself is a divergent musical path from how Rhimes has utilized music in previous shows, where sound-ups on the lyrics of a song are as important as the music scoring the scene.
This has specifically been employed on Scandal, which doesn’t use a lot of music but, starting with its second episode, began defining its territory as ’60s and ’70s soul and funk. As Patsvas told Radio.com, her favorite musical moments from last season were Michael Jackson’s “Ben,” which accompanied the reveal of some rats in the show; Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City;” and the Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today,” which scored a flashback.
“As we do more and more episodes, a sound can get honed,” Patsvas explains. “With this show, however, from the outset Shonda wanted that sound. So from the pilot we were focusing on great soul, R&B, funk and a little disco.”
For Patsvas, Scandal represents a unique clearance challenge. Where Murder and Grey’s are stacked with new artists hungry for the type of attention that placement in a Rhimes show can generate, waiting on approvals from the legacy artists used on Scandal can push production down to the wire.
“The unsexy part of being a music supervisor is the clearance process,” Patsvas says. “These are iconic tracks and we have to work really hard to make sure we can clear them in time. The television schedule, at the beginning of the season, is a little less frantic, but as we move into the end we have very little time between cutting, mixing and going to air. Shonda’s selecting these great tracks, and it’s my job to make sure they’re ready to go.”
These classic tracks are a great strategy for a show like Scandal, which is set in an alternate universe of the now. It reinforces a timeless style expressed in the wardrobe of the show’s lead, Kerry Washington, while at the same time drawing attention to her heritage. Where it would be over the top to score Ellen Pomepo (Meredith Grey) or Sandra Oh’s (Cristina Yang) dialogue on Grey’s to the Staples Singers’ “Respect Yourself,” it works on Scandal, reinforcing that the show is built around an ensemble cast lead by a black character.
And that bring us to what’s been the musical center of Grey’s Anatomy for 11 seasons: indie rock. Even before the first episode aired in March of 2005—the show was a midseason replacement series—ABC ran a promo beginning that February featuring the track “Such Great Heights” by the Postal Service. Although it was never placed in an episode, it became so deeply associated with the show that it appeared on the first Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack album.
Jen Czeisler, then the vice president of licensing for Sub Pop Records and now the president and founder of her own company, Rogue Octopus, recalled that the song placement and the promo’s longer-than-average run caused a “significant” sales bump for the already successful Postal Service album, which had originally been released in 2003.
“The soundtrack style of Grey’s Anatomy does have a lot in common with the style of John Hughes films [of the ’80s], as did Garden State, which came in the same time period,” Czeisler tells Radio.com. “They all used cool indie artists who would not get exposure other places.”
Patsavas came to Grey’s after her noteworthy work, of similar style and with the same sort of indie artists, on The O.C. While Rhimes was a brand new showrunner, Patsavas had earned some degree of trust after working so closely with the indie community on The O.C., a show that was well received and whose exposure had given artists lots of opportunities for more press and higher sales, without the icky feeling of selling out.
One of the indie acts featured in that first season was Tegan & Sara.
“Placing music in television shows wasn’t as accepted as it is now, and we definitely discussed at length how it could impact the status and credibility of our band if they show wasn’t a success,” Sara recalled during a conversation with Radio.com. “Until that point in our career we hadn’t had much visibility on mainstream mediums, so we knew this could be too big an opportunity to pass up.”
Tegan & Sara have since had additional songs used in Grey’s Anatomy. In fact, during the season 10 finale this past May, the duo’s song “Where Does the Good Go,” which had been used in that very first season, was even brought back and given key placement when Sandra Oh’s character said goodbye.
Sara says in 2014—a time when streaming and illegal downloading have significantly eroded sales—”alternate routes to expose our music to a wide audience” such as this are “a must.” So when the show reached out to use the song again, they did not hesitate.
Patsavas explained that the reason many indie artists in Grey’s have felt significant impact after having their music placed in the show is due to the nature of how the songs are used. They don’t simply pop up: often they are the score.
“As the show has evolved and changed we’ve experimented with different musical signatures,” Patsavas says. “Originally [Rhimes] knew she wanted to use songs almost as score. They played for a long time, they tied together scenes. In conjunction with our great composer Danny Lux, the songs really score the picture rather than being used in traditional source moments, which would include radios and parties.”
As one of her own most impactful moments, Patsavas points to Snow Patrol, whose track “Chasing Cars” was used almost in full during Grey’s Anatomy‘s second season finale. She recalled that, at the time, the song was “not necessarily intended to be a single,” but after being used in a particularly memorable scene with “very little dialogue” it was released. Two videos were also created, including one that had footage from Grey’s Anatomy and was turned into a promo piece for the show’s third season, further elongating the life of the song.
The impact was palpable. Snow Patrol went on to land a spot performing on Saturday Night Live, while the song ended up selling over three million copies in the U.S. and even winning a GRAMMY for Best Rock Song. It is, quite literally, the kind of success that money can’t buy.
~
The new seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder air Thursday, Sept. 25 starting at 8 pm ET on ABC.
More news on Radio.com
- P!nk Calls VMAs ‘Gross and Embarrassing’
- One Direction’s ‘Drag Me Down’ Ousted As Spotify Streaming Record Holder
- Vince Staples Wants Miley Cyrus to Apologize to Kendrick Lamar
- Miley Cyrus’ Producer Oren Yoel Discusses ‘Dead Petz’ and Madonna Comparisons
- Keith Richards: Metallica, Black Sabbath Jokes, Hip Hop for the Tone Deaf
