Music is a character in the world of Umbrella Academy, and it takes different forms. There's the score, needle drops, an original song. It even makes its way into the script. In this episode, we talk to the people who chose the music of the show, and we’ll talk to them about some of your favorite musical moments of season two.
Music is a character in the world of Umbrella Academy, and it takes different forms. There's the score, needle drops, an original song. It even makes its way into the script. In this episode, we talk to the people who chose the music of the show, and we’ll talk to them about some of your favorite musical moments of season two.
Emmy: I heard a rumor… that you watched all the new episodes of The Umbrella Academy before listening to this podcast. Otherwise, things will be spoiled.
Jeff: I mean, when I'm writing anything, I'm sitting in front of my computer with a piano, you know, like on the keyboard. Sometimes I sit in front of my piano and just sketch out melodies or whatever, or sometimes I'm messing around with the synthesizer to try to find something to inspire me to write something.
That’s Jeff Russo. Jeff is a film and TV composer in LA. He’s written scores for shows like Fargo and Star Trek: Discovery. In 2018 he started working on a new project … The Umbrella Academy.
Jeff got his start as the lead guitarist for the rock band Tonic. But guitar isn’t always his main instrument. To find just the right melody, the right beat, Jeff will play on almost anything.
Jeff: It all depends on the project. You know, sometimes I'm sitting in front of a bunch of instruments, you know, like a couple string instruments and some percussion instruments in a room where I just sort of bang on something until I am inspired to to write something. It- it really all depends on what I'm writing and what I want to end up with.
But he can’t bring a piece to life alone. He needs an orchestra to fill out his idea. When COVID-19 hit, he found himself facing a new obstacle:
Jeff: And once the lockdown happened, I had to figure out how to record our orchestra, which is is pretty big. it's usually around 40 some odd players in the orchestra. And I had to figure out how to do that.
Jeff: So, you know, the general instrumentation of the show is strings and winds, woodwinds and a little bit of percussion.
The Hollywood Symphony Orchestra is Jeff’s go-to when he’s recording a soundtrack. Usually they would all sit together in a big studio in LA to record… Now, they had to do it alone… piece by piece.
Jeff: We figured out how to record all the different pieces individually in people's homes and then sort of put it together like a jigsaw puzzle.
That meant recording strings, piano, woodwinds, bass, and percussion, completely separate.
This season has a total of 172 original songs…and with 30 to 40 musicians to record, that totalled to well over six thousand total audio files to be compiled, edited, and mixed together.
Jeff: I have a recording engineer and mixer who under the current circumstances works a lot harder than than before because now we're recording 30 discrete individual musicians and putting it all together and mixing it all together and getting it to sound like they played in one room. And it has worked out extremely well. Much to my happiness and joy.
This is Behind the Scenes: The Umbrella Academy, Season 2. I’m your host, Brandon Jenkins.
Any fan will tell you that this show’s unconventional use of music is central to the feel of the series. It’s no coincidence that the comics that inspired the show were conceived by a musician --- The singer Gerard Way --- and that the series is made by a bunch of music fanatics. So today, we’ll be talking to the team about how you can put modern music in a period show, how lyrics can take on a new life in the script, and how Gerard Way was inspired by Season 1 to write an original song for Season 2.
Brandon: When you were first writing the graphic novels with Gabriel, were you listening to any particular type of music at the time, that was sort of like inspiring what you were doing.
Gerard: Yeah. Absolutely. There is a ton of stuff I was listening to, but a lot of it like I would just keep certain albums on repeat.
This is Gerard Way. The lead singer of My Chemical Romance, and the creator of The Umbrella Academy graphic novels.
Gerard: So like Doolittle by the Pixies.The Pixies I was listening to a lot of when I was. When I was writing Umbrella Academy, there's a lot of imagery that's conjured up through the Pixies, even for their album artwork. You know, like Monkey's Gone to Heaven. And I thought about monkeys. And, you know, Frank Black's lyrics are really abstract and maybe think of like strange things or really interesting images.So the Pixies were like a big part of the Umbrella Academy writing process. And then there's this one Smashing Pumpkins song called Tarantula that I listen to on repeat for a whole issue. And I just listened to it over and over.
Brandon: How important is music to the feel of the show and to the characters that we get to see on screen?
Gerard: Music's really important of the show, but that's totally Steve.
Steve... is Steve Blackman, the showrunner of The Umbrella Academy.
Gerard: The things that we do discuss together involving music are the cover songs that I do for the show. So like, he'll kind of pitch me on something, you know? Sometimes I 'll pitch him on something like I remember that I pitched him on Hazy Shade of Winter, but he pitched me on the Turtles song. So we're really collaborative. And it comes to the songs that I'm contributing to the show. But the soundtrack is all, Steve.
Brandon: On a scale of one to ten, how important would you say the music of Umbrella Academy is?
Steve: A strong ten plus.
This, of course, is Steve Blackman.
Brandon: Why? Why is that? I mean, why is it such a such a powerful, not even character with force in the making of the show?
Steve: Well, I love music. Music is a big part of my life. When I first mix the show, I said to the mixers, I said, you know, crank the volume on the music. The music is a character and they're like, no, no, it doesn't mix well. I said guys, turn it up. So we kept turning it up because I said, like music and the show inspires you. It can help you feel sad. It can help you feel happy. It can make you want to get up on your feet and move. So early on I planned- I wanted music to be a big thing.
Brandon:Growing up what type of music were you we into?
Steve: I was into it everything, I mean, I was an-- I was a kid who sort of came into music in the 80s. So I listened to everything from you know, punk rock to, you know, the ballads of the day. I just loved it. I mean I always had it playing. My Walkman was always in my pocket. Boy, I just aged myself with that comment. it was just important to me. And, you know, I had a lot of inspiration, you know, at home -- I, my parents listened to Frank Sinatra and those kinds of crooners. And if you notice in the show, I do use a lot of the crooners in the show.
We got Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra. And then, you know, I will listen to ABBA without shame and I will listen to, you know, Kiss when I want to get one of, you know, rock.
There are a number of different ways Steve and the music team find just the right songs for the show. And inspiration can come from all kinds of places.
Brandon: Diego's hallway fight at the Mexican embassy. Did you try it with songs or with score or how did you decide which song to roll out with?
Steve: That one was interesting. I always wanted to be music, not score. A needle drop.
A needle drop is the term for when you take an existing song from the real world and use it to score a scene.
Steve: And the reason is it was a really big fight. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to play something, you know, big and rocking. And, you know, to really make you feel what Diego's feeling, that it's, you know, the just the whole gravitas, the scale of what this fight is, there's people downstairs, everyone's punching everyone upstairs. I had Kiss on in the background and by fluke, I pull that up watching it and I'm like, OK, this is working really well together. I just turned down the volume of the show, Let the Kiss song playing. I'm like, this works.
Opening guitar lick of “I was made for loving you”
Steve: So that was a bit of a fluke where I just happened to be playing some Kiss and I watched the picture and it felt right to me.
Brandon: Please tell me it was the Kiss vinyl playing
Steve: Kiss vinyl man all the way! Of course the vinyl with all its little scratches, it has scratches on it. It was great. No, it was vinyl.
I was made for loving you plays
Steve: So believe it or not, I tried a Miley Cyrus cover of Dolly Parton, Jolene. We couldn't quite get the clearance on that song. Which is one of the issues we deal with is clearing. And sometimes we can clear a song, sometimes we can't.
Clearing is getting permission from a song’s owner in order to use it in the show. But Steve doesn't deal with clearance. And he doesn’t choose all the songs himself. For season 2, he hired a professional.
Steve: I have Jen Malone, she's an amazing music supervisor, so she lives in music as well. And she comes to me and says, here's three great options for this scene. And sometimes I'll go to her and say, you know, does this song work? What do you think of this song there? And together we'll sort of have a great back and forth until we find the right fit.
Jen: The first song that we had got denied. And then, you know, we tried a lot of different songs there. And Steve went with Kiss, “I Was Made For Loving You.”
This is Jen Malone.
Jen: And I remember kind of being like, hmm OK, that's an interesting choice. But his vision was to have a song there that like, You know, I remember him saying, like, I just want a song that just completely doesn't belong there. I was like OK. Kiss, “I Was Made for Loving You” definitely does not belong in that spot.
You may not recognize Jen’s name … but you know her work … She’s basically the gold standard when it comes to her field.
Jen: I am the music supervisor for Euphoria. I do also Atlanta.
By the way, Jen has been nominated for Emmy awards for her work on both of those shows.
Brandon: I'm curious to sort of like your process of collaboration. Do you all make playlists together or sort of like place music for scenes separately and then come together and say, oh, we like this or we like that? Or is there like a group brainstorm maybe?
Jen [00:29:40] It's a little bit of both. On Spotify I have a playlist. That's about like five hundred songs right now. And yeah, those are the songs that yeah. Like I'll find something and just be like happened to have a spot for it which is great.
Jen: Steve and I do have a playlist of just cool songs that may or may not make it into season two, maybe season three or four. We have about like 75 songs right now. So what we do is when we need a song for a spot, I would submit the options, the editors would cut them in and then Steve would watch them. And and sometimes it's no, none of these are working for me. Let's try a couple more. Or he will have an idea of let's try this song and then we put it in or, you know, to take it a step further it will be well, is this something that can be scored? Can this be a score moment? It's also, you know, a dialog of, well, you know, what are you feeling for the scene? And, you know, what's your what's your vibe? And so it's just a constant conversation.
Brandon When it comes to, like, mining songs to at least submit and present and say, OK, does this work? Is it you know, you kind of talked about like, you know, making playlists. But do you have moments where you have to go and find analog stuff like I guess C.D.s can be considered analog at this point? Like CDs or cassette tapes or vinyl or really dig?
Jen No, no, no, no. I have to go to the rights holders because I don't want to pitch something that we can't have. And so it's a lot of just, you know, digging and finding who owns the right. Hey is this clearable, any red flags? No. OK. Send me the MP3 and then we'll try it.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah. I was just as soon as you said it was like, OK, this makes immediate sense. Like you don't want to find that that song that maybe fits great or feels great, but then it's like, who does this belong to? You know, and like, you know, can we even access this person's estate or get them to clear it? No. Yeah totally.
Jen: I have tons of clearance nightmare stories.
When using music that travels across genres and time, Jen explains that the next question is how music will work in the scene. One of the most important distinctions for a music supervisor is will the song be diegetic, or non-diegetic.
Jen: Diegetic is music that the characters hear, the music that is in the world of the narrative. So radio source, bar source, something that that the characters are hearing. Non-diegetic would be, you know, music that is over a montage. Let's say, so music that the characters are not hearing. It doesn't live in the world of of the narrative.
Brandon: That's interesting. It's sort of like if you're in a museum, like you could look in a picture and see something in the scene versus the actual, like, design of the museum, like the space that you're in, looking at this frame, I'm wondering, is that like...Is that something you all take into heavy consideration when thinking about the viewer at home of like, is this gonna take them out of the scene? Is this going to uh pull them further in?
Jen: Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's one of the -- and that's a great point of finding songs that don't that don't take you out of the scene. Um and, you know, it's finding music that supports the scene that kind of just fits underneath and just lifts the scene. So definitely you don't want to be taking viewers out of it. So that's just, you know, that's just comes down to trying different songs and seeing what what feels right.
Even without the hassle of clearing songs, figuring out what song goes where and what the song means, takes a lot of work. And even though the show takes place in the 1960s, Jen and Steve didn’t want to limit themselves to the period. For some scenes, it’s the energy that matters most, the mood the music sets. Take for example, Luther’s first boxing match, featuring DJ Shadow and De La Soul’s “Rocket Fuel”, a song that dropped in 2019.
Brandon For a song that seemed like that it feels like one of the more important factors might be pacing over instead something like lyrics, maybe.
Jen Yeah, I mean, lyrically, you know, it kind of starts off like, are you ready, you know, so I think getting, you know, getting into the boxing scene. I think that kind of worked.
Jen: But also, you know, a lot of the songs we do edit, you know, there's a lot of really cool edits. We have such talented editors on the show. And so they were able to kind of do some slow-mo, just really kinda fancy editing that worked with the song.
In the scene, the first glimpse we get is of Luther, bare knuckle boxing in a grungy underground ring. He takes hit after hit. Punches are thrown in slow motion, then sped up again, keeping time with the music. Luther seems to be losing….until he gets a nod from the boss. And that’s when Luther does what he does best, and pummels his opponent.
Jen: We don't use a lot of hip hop in the show. And this definitely has a hip hop, old school, you know, backpack type of vibe. And so it was really, really different than kind of than the rest of the music in the show. It just lends itself really, really nicely for this scene. You know, it's a hype song, that's what makes Umbrella Academy soundtrack so special.
Brandon: I want to talk about one more scene. When Five fights himself. So I. Yeah. I love that you just started laughing immediately. For that scene, you chose Bi- Billy Idol's Dancing with myself. Can you kind of talk us through the moment you chose that song?
Jen: Yeah, it's actually Generation X, which was Billy Idol was the lead singer. So this song I actually remember. Um,si it was Friday afternoon, the day after the Guild of Music Supervisors Awards, which I, I won for Euphoria which I was super psyched about. So needless to say, I had a lot of fun. So this was one where I was just like, OK, we need this by the end of the day today. And I sat down and paperwork was done and it was kind of quiet and I just kind of sat there and was like, OK, I don't. I got to figure out where to start, like which playlist should I go to, which era, which genre, which, you know, just kind of where's my my starting point. And then just it kind of it was one of those moments where it just came to me I w as like, oh, Dancing with Myself. I mean, it's it's funny. It's ironic. It fits. I know Steve loves his, his 80s.
Jen: And so that was one that I was just like. Can you just put this one in. I'll I'll go and just show it to Steve to kind of stall so that I could also figure out if there were any alts. But I was so, so excited for this one. It was one of those where I was like, oh well, my work is done. Like, after I tried it, to, you know. But but. And everybody was just, you know, they loved it. Netflix loved it. So that was just it was, it was one of those where I will never forget was in picking that one and my state of mind. We'll leave it at that.
Music isn’t just used in the traditional way. The show uses a mix of scoring and some hits you might recognize, but Steve and his writers room also used music lyrics in the script. When Klaus starts a cult, instead of preaching traditional religious teachings, he quotes pop songs.
Steve: The joke of the show I came up with the idea that he was just quoting other famous lyrics from music. So he's a little like me, where I quote music lyrics every now and then, but he'd take it to the extreme.
Keechee (clip): Any nuggets of wisdom you can give to me?
Klaus (clip): Don’t go chasing waterfalls, stick to the rivers and lakes that you’re used to.
Keechee: That’s so deep.
Robert: Hello, I'm Captain Robert Sheehan.
That Irish accent you just heard isn’t a captain. It’s Robert Sheehan, the actor that plays Klaus on Umbrella Academy.
Robert: He's a creature of many masks. Do you know what I mean? And his great skill, I think, is adaptability, transformation. And that means, you know, survival first. So I think if even if you dropped him in medieval times, you'd probably shake something about, you know, few probably a probably, you know, grow his hair long and pretend to be the new Jesus.
Keechee (clip): But the scripture says “as long as I know how to love, I know I’ll stay alive. I’ve got all my life to live and I’ve got all” --
Klaus: No, no, no, no -- that’s not scripture, okay, it’s a song lyric by disco diva Gloria Gaynor. And I stole it.
Keechee: Gloria Gaynor
But it’s Klaus’s last teaching that is my absolute favorite.
Brandon: So there's “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys. And I'm wondering how that one comes together.
Steve: That was a really funny one. I was, uh, I was in Toronto where we shoot the show. I was with a few of the other writers that I'd flown up because I needed their help and we were all up there. It was very late at night. We might have had a cocktail or two. And we were trying desperately to figure out how to work that scene. And it was it had to be great moment because there were great VFX that were going to happen, that moment between, you know, Klaus and Ben. But we wanted a song that sort of explained how Klaus’s teachings would have worked over the three years as a cult leader. So we thought what would be sort of the wonderfully absurdist thing he could say as his parting words to Keechee and the cult that he's never going to see again? What sort of lyrics? And then we remembered the lyrics to that song.
Steve: We thought, they're just-- I mean, we love the Backstreet Boys, but those lyrics are kind of don't make a whole lot of sense when you hear them together.
Ben as Klaus (clip): Oh my god, we’re back again…. Brothers, sisters, everybody, sing!
Steve: And we said that's the perfect song. So they sound sort of profound. They don't at the same time. And that's the last lyrics Klaus is going to tell his followers before he runs. Plus, it's a kick ass song. We just love the song.
CLIP: We’re gonna bring you the flavor, we’re gonna show you how!
Brandon: Were there other songs you considered for that scene?
Steve: Not really. We all just laughed and said, it's perfect. We played it. I think, you know, 11, 12 at night, we said we got the song. We just -- we danced around in the office together. Yeah. Dare I say it might be timeless. I might go on record as saying that song might be timeless.
What makes Umbrella Academy Season 2 different from other shows, and even from Season 1, is that in addition to an original score and covers and needle drops, there is also original Gerard Way music.
Gerard: So Steve came to me for Season 2 for the trailer and he wanted another cover song. And I think Netflix wanted that, too. And then I just said to Steve, I was like, Steve, I have this song that I wrote I started writing the very first day of Umbrella Academy shooting the very first scene, which is the last scene of the first episode between Ellen and Aiden in her apartment.
Vanya (Clip): l’ll put on a pot of coffee.
And I kept picturing after Ellen would deliver her line “I’ll put on a pot of coffee,” I kept picturing a cut cutting to black. And then I kind of heard this song in my head, kind of Velvet Underground-ish type song, maybe a little bit like Rolling Stones, too. And still, when I went home, I started recording that song but then I never finished it. And so I said to Steve for season two, I said, you know, I have this song. Let me send you the really rough demo. I was like, there's no vocals on the chorus. It's totally unfinished. But try to picture this in the trailer.
Gerard: And he loved it. And that will be a brand new song in the trailer for Season 2.
Brandon: Even going over the hurdles that's just tight to like have something that you were inspired by like from the beginning of Season 1 and then to throw it in Season 2.
Gerard: I know, I think it’s really awesome
Next week, we’ll find out how the Umbrella team fights with the family, with the Commission, and with Canadian weather.
Jason And I'll never forget Steve just kind of starting to laugh, like looking at all of us, like you guys are -- you guys are going to hate me.
David: Yeah. I remember the day that we shot that and my heart was going to fall out of my chest.
Ritu: Throwin’ me under the bus! No, it was really hard for me. It did not come naturally.
Steve: We went away for a day. We came back and there's four feet of snow on the ground.
Behind The Scenes: The Umbrella Academy is a Netflix and Pineapple Street Studios production. I’m your host, Brandon Jenkins. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe, rate and review this podcast. Thanks for listening.