Nora Felder – nominated for the Emmy Award for outstanding music supervision (Farinoush Mostaghimi)
The term “music supervisor” may conjure the image of a foreman on a worksite, a bundle of keys jangling on his belt as he oversees musical laborers of some kind. But for the women and men who claim the title, it is a term of creative artistry — and this year, the Television Academy agrees.
This month, the inaugural Emmy Award will be granted for outstanding music supervision. It’s an acknowledgment that the folks who select, license and place songs and other preexisting music are key contributors to small-screen storytelling. The honor was lobbied for by the Guild of Music Supervisors, particularly board member Thomas Golubic, whose television credits include “Breaking Bad,” “Halt and Catch Fire” and “Better Call Saul.”
“It’s definitely evolved,” Golubic said of his profession. “Like all crafts, the excellence in the craft is largely representative of the ambitions of the medium. Television, in particular, has had such a resurgence in the last few years.”
He singled out “The Sopranos,” as many have, as the dawn of the new TV renaissance.
“(It) was like a one-hour movie that you got in installments,” he said. “And the fact that they did not use score, and that they used songs exclusively, I think was a real innovation, and I think that it opened up the door for a lot of other shows.”
Golubicc is one of this year’s first class of nominees for his work on “Better Call Saul.” The others are Zach Cowie and Kerri Drootin for “Master of None,” Nora Felder for “Stranger Things,” Susan Jacobs for “Big Little Lies,” and Manish Raval, Jonathan Leahy and Tom Wolfe for “Girls.”
Each show represents a recent explosion in the creative opportunities for music supervisors, series where songs play integral roles, oftentimes roles that instrumental scoring has traditionally filled. It’s a new aesthetic, using the unique power of songs — with their lyrics and cultural currency — to provide subtext or subversion or nostalgic emotion.
“I think what (Golubic) does often is to peel back what’s going on on the surface, and evoke things that are going on deeper into the story,” said Peter Gould, executive producer on “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.” “In both shows, we have a lot of characters who usually don’t say what they mean, or in some cases, don’t even understand what’s going on with themselves all that well. The music that Thomas brings to it often hits a note that nothing else really could.”
Gould cited two recent examples from “Better Call Saul.” For a montage of Nacho (Michael Mando) making dummy pills to eliminate his boss, Golubicc suggested the Fink song “Cold Feet,” which sings the line “Always walking a vicious circle” over a fuzzy guitar riff. In another, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) takes his frustration out on his car’s cupholder — set to the surprising strains of a Bollywood love duet.
“It’s amazing how much flexibility the show is capable of,” Golubicc said. “Maybe part of it is the fact that it takes wild aesthetic choices and risks that still speak really closely to the characters.”
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Felder has been music supervising for 20 years and called it “a very left brain/right brain job.” Much of her time is spent researching and tracking down copyright holders, negotiating deals and discerning how to license – and afford – everything her producers want to use.
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Music supervision was born in film, where in the early days songs were often more about “needle-drop” set dressing and less about subtly enhancing story. Golubicc noted “2001: A Space Odyssey” — in which Stanley Kubrick cleverly used pre-existing classical pieces instead of original score — and “The Graduate’s” Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack as early examples of supervision as an art form.
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This story was first published in http://DenverPost.com
By Tim Greiving | Special To The Washington Post
Photo: Nora Felder is nominated for the inaugural Emmy Award for outstanding music supervision for her work on “Stranger Things.” (Farinoush Mostaghimi)