What is “good taste” anyway? Allow your favorite actor, musician, celebrity, or comedian to let you in on what they’re watching, reading, and consuming.
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Pier Carthew, Everett Collection, Shutterstock, JSBC/Youtube
One of the more unfortunate side effects of the never-ending discourse about The Drama’s premise is that it distracts from the film’s true highlight: its music. The movie’s soundtrack is a treasure chest of deep cuts — Scottish funk pop, Norwegian trip-hop, German underground folk — exquisitely selected by music supervisor Jemma Burns. My jaw dropped during the opening sequence, when soon-to-be-married couple Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) rehearse their first dance to “I Want to Lay With You.” It is an obscure ’70s love ballad by the little-known folk singer Shira Small, who recorded it as a 17-year-old Quaker boarding-school student. A few years later, she left music to pursue a career as a physician’s assistant. Her raspy, soulful songs were rescued from the dustbins by archival record label the Numero Group, which reissued her album The Line of Time and the Plane of Now in 2022.
The Drama’s music only gets better from there. The moment I left the theater, I had DM’d actress Sydney Lemmon for the name of the dreamy cyberpop song her wedding-DJ character Pauline plays. (It’s “Again,” by Katie Fash, Fakethias, and Elusin, commissioned specifically for the film.) Then I started Googling for the full soundtrack playlist. I eventually realized I just had to speak with Burns directly. Over a video call on Thursday evening, she credited The Drama director Kristoffer Borgli for his openness: “He was very keen to use songs that aren’t, I think he used the term ‘part of the popular culture at large,’” she says. “It was a pleasure to be able to deep dive into the more unique songs that might have felt too odd for people with less broad music taste.”
Let’s start with “I Want to Lay With You.” I remember hearing it in The Drama and thinking, No way. I was curious to know how you discovered it. Was it through the Numero Group?
I’m very a big fan of Numero and love all their gorgeous private-pressing reissues. But I actually think a good friend of mine played that song for me. His name’s Ben O’Connor. He runs a really iconic Australian record label called Chapter Music.
When Kris first briefed me on this scene, I put together a whole playlist of songs that had this quality of being incredibly sweet and slightly old-fashioned with a purity and an innocence about them that would then contrast with what happens next. The other main contender was “One Fine Summer Morning,” by Evie Sands.
Obviously, there are lots of reissue labels out there now, and there’s things like NTS Radio, and that makes it easier for people to discover left-field old records. I saw a funny comment on social media where someone was complimenting us on the soundtrack and then said, “By the way, do you guys listen to NTS? I’m pretty sure these are all part of the Breakfast Show staples.” I mean, I think Charlie and Emma would definitely be NTS listeners.
After the movie, I just sat on my floor listening to these magical old folk singer-songwriters like Shira Small — Karen Dalton and Kath Bloom, etc. — just to stay in the dream world of the opening sequence. When you get a prompt from someone like Kris, where does the research process take you?
The first thing I do is go through my own music library. I’ve got playlists with all sorts of themes, but you have to tag the hell out of them with the era and the country, because otherwise it just disappears. I get about 50 albums a day in my inbox. And then most music supervisors use the music-management platform Disco.
If I feel like I’m struggling and like I need more options, I’ll ask friends to send over some tracks or reach out to a record label I know specializes in a particular sound.
Kris was just such an awesome collaborator. When I sent him the first playlist of ideas, he was so enthusiastic, and it was really fun to think, Aha, finally, I’m working with someone who has the same sensibility and taste as me. I was very pleasantly surprised that he loved “Inside Out,” the Jesse Rae song. It’s the song Emma puts on when she’s like, Oh, cheer up, and he’s singing, “Don’t ever give up, baby.”
I was looking that song up on Spotify, and it only had a couple thousand streams. I saw the cover photo of Jesse Rae in the Viking hat and thought that maybe I’d gotten something wrong.
I honestly can’t remember where I found it, but I’ve had that song in my collection for years — and, to my surprise, even my more nerdy DJ friends didn’t know it. It’s a fun, gorgeous little tale: This Scottish guy comes over to America and befriends these legendary funk musicians — from the Zapp crew to Parliament-Funkadelic. They clearly hit it off, because some of them even went back to Scotland with him and recorded this album. You should really look up the music video. They’re all standing on top of trains in kilts playing funk bass.
How were you brought onto The Drama in the first place?
I’d worked with Square Peg before, which is Ari Aster’s production company. I’d worked with one of their producers, Tyler Campellone, on Beau Is Afraid. He just got me and was like, “I think you’re going to really hit it off with my buddy Kris.” He was right.
The most niche playlist that you’ve had to make?
Oh, goodness — I’ve had to find things like lullabies from Kazakhstan.
Something that people should understand about music supervision is that it’s not just about having good taste — you have to be able to navigate almost every genre imaginable. I once had to track down Kurdish resistance songs, specifically from Iran. Suggesting music to directors is easier than the other way around. For this film called The Rover, directed by David Michôd, I just got a link that said, “Cambodian pop song” for the big opening sequence and had to figure out what it was and how to license it. I did manage to track it down — but that’s the job.
One of my favorite songs in recent memory is Smerz’s “You Got Time and I Got Money.” I’ve literally said that I would get married just to slow-dance to that song. It’s funny you put it in the sex scene when Emma slaps Charlie.
Well, I’ve actually been a fan of Smerz since their very first EP. That track, to me, was easily one of the sexiest songs of last year. And it made sense for that moment — Emma’s trying to reconnect with her partner, so of course she’d put on the sexiest song she knows.
I’m sure you know, but there’s this incredible groundswell of female Scandinavian artists right now, from Denmark’s ML Buch to, well, the list is endless.
A bunch of them came to play the Knockdown Center in New York last fall. It was Erika de Casier, Fine, Smerz …
Kris is Norwegian, and we brought in a couple of Norwegian artists that he’s friends with: Todd Terje and Fakethias. We commissioned Fakethias to do a song for our wonderful DJ character, Pauline. He brought in another incredible artist, Elusin, who’s the singer who is bringing back that whole witch-house, Salem kind of sound, which makes me think that maybe we’ve gotten to the point where, after indie sleaze, witch house could be the next genre.
But it was great working with all these awesome smaller labels — from reissue labels like Numero and Stroom, who are based in Belgium, to Stones Throw and Now-Again, the L.A.–based reissue label run by one of the people who actually founded Stones Throw.
And it was through them that I was able to get in touch with Kingpin Skinny Pimp. We only hear a couple of flashes of his music, but it’s so immediate — it brings the vibe instantly. When Kris told me he was really looking for some early-2000s southern hip-hop, that whole cassette-era sound, my first thought was, Oh, God, how am I going to clear those songs or even track some of those people down? But fortunately, Eothen Alapatt, who runs Now-Again, is Madlib’s business partner, and he’s obviously one of the most respected figures in hip-hop, so he can connect me with pretty much anyone in that scene across the States.
There’s definitely a European sensibility to the film, I feel, and yet a lot of that is balanced with other influences. We’ve got older European artists like Juliette Gréco alongside the more modern artists we’ve been talking about. That’s one of the things that makes it stand out — the fact that it’s probably more influenced by ’60s French directors like Jacques Demy than something like When Harry Met Sally. And there’s this constant fluctuation between that dreamy, old-world atmosphere and the cynicism and harsher reality that the contemporary characters are up against.
What are your own personal movie tastes?
I mean, if we’re talking about contemporary directors, I’m completely obsessed with Alice Rohrwacher, Joanna Hogg, and Kelly Reichardt. I studied film, so the list goes on.
What’s the last new movie that you’ve watched?
Sirāt. Have you seen it?
I haven’t, but I heard that there’s an amazing club aspect to it.
It’s so wild. I have no idea how they made that film. The director is obviously very involved in this particular desert-rave scene because it’s so authentic and so mind-blowing, but the location’s just insane. It’s clifftop roads in the middle of the desert. Kangding Ray’s score doesn’t sit in the film. It is almost like its own character.
Are there other top film soundtracks for you?
Phantom Thread is probably one of my all-time favorite scores and films. I also love directors like Yorgos Lanthimos, and films like The Lobster and Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir. Those are recent examples where the use of music really surprised me — it can be so abrupt, even challenging at times. Challengers, too.
What is your general media diet?
I watch a lot of contemporary cinema, but I also try to watch as many weird old films as possible just to mix it all up. I can’t be highbrow all the time. I also love a Japanese dating show, like Is She the Wolf? Or there’s a Chinese one called Are You the One and there are 40 women standing and one man has to come out and pitch himself to all of them, and it’s brutal and hilarious. Podcast-wise, I love The Rest Is History. I’ve ended up listening to a multipart series on the demise of the Plains Indians.
To what extent were you exposed to Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s music tastes?
With Zendaya, I didn’t necessarily have as much feedback about her music taste, but I had to be very conscious of what a cultural icon she is and how synonymous she is with certain aesthetics, whether it’s from Euphoria or other productions. But I’ve worked with Rob on several projects, and he chimed in at some point and said, “Would this character really be a karaoke guy, though?” It’s a valid point. Ultimately, the actors are the ones that are really inhabiting these roles, so any of these points we take.
With Rob’s karaoke comment, what was he referring to? What role was that?
Oh, sorry. That’s for an upcoming film that we’re actually working on at the moment.
What are you personally enjoying listening to right now?
There are two releases of the last few months that I’ve been a little obsessed with. One of them is actually Flea’s album, particularly the cover of Flea playing the sweetest jazz-trumpet version of a Frank Ocean song. It’s obviously something that he’s been gearing up to do for however many decades, so he’s sort of pouring everything into it, and you can really hear that. The other artists that I’ve been quite obsessed with, who I’ve seen live recently is Water From Your Eyes.
Yes. Oh my God.
I just think they’re one of the coolest bands to emerge from America in recent times, honestly. I’m sometimes not super interested in music that’s very referential of eras from my youth, because I already lived it. But I feel like they are a wonderful mash-up of all different sounds from early ’90s rave music to grunge to shoegaze. They’re obviously very clever. They just bring it.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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