Like many women in their twenties trying to distract themselves from the overall state of the world, I’ve been tuning into the third season of The Summer I Turned Pretty every week. The show, based on the bestselling trilogy by Jenny Han, tells the story of Isabel (‘Belly’) Conklin who spends every Summer at her mother’s lifelong best friend’s beach-house and her relationship with the friend’s two sons – the broody Conrad and golden boy Jeremiah. The series has gone on to become immensely popular and influential – particularly its soundtrack.
From the beginning the music of the show has been an important part of its branding. The initial trailer for the first season featured the first snippet of This Love (Taylor’s Version) prior to the song’s official release. This is what initially drew my attention to the show, as someone who hadn’t read the books. Jenny Han has cited Swift’s music as a major inspiration to her writing, so it’s almost no surprise that 20 of her songs have been used in the show and its promotional materials. Popular artists like Chappel Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Ariana Grande, and Olivia Rodrigo also make repeated appearances on the soundtrack. The official Spotify playlist is updated weekly with each new episode’s release, encouraging fans to actively follow along. Listening to the entire thing would be no small feat as a single 45-60 minute episode can include over ten songs – and the final season hasn’t even finished yet! According to Variety, some artists whose music has been used in the show have experienced a 6000% increase in streams/sales since – this demonstrates that people are listening.
In some ways this isn’t particularly noteworthy. Soundtracks have always been a crucial element of visual media. The right song at the right moment can transform a would-be-simple scene into an iconic touchstone in popular culture. Consider the use of “Don’t Stop Believing” (Glee/The Sopranos), “Running Up That Hill” (Stranger Things), “Carry On My Wayward Son” (Supernatural), “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (House MD) or “How To Save A Life” (Grey’s Anatomy) – these songs, despite not being written with the programme in mind, have all become integral part of each show’s identity. In some cases these songs encapsulate the era the story is set in, in others their recurrence serves to highlight the themes or message of the show. Music is also a profound medium for emotional expression and storytelling. Last year my stepfather and I were preparing dinner while listening to music. No matter how talented a writer someone is, there are some things that words alone can’t convey. When “With Or Without You” by U2 started playing he turned to me and said “This always makes me think about Ross and Rachel” – referring to the song’s use throughout different moments in their relationship on Friends. A song from the 80s, used in a sitcom from the 90s, still draws an emotional response some thirty-years later. This highlights just how criticial it is to choose the right song to underscore your scene.
As a fan of musical theatre I am particularly interested in the process behind this selection process. Generally speaking, in a ‘good’ musical the songs will convey the character’s growth and the beats of the story. The ensemble numbers will typically further the plot while also giving space for moments of character exposition and development – think ‘Non Stop’ in Hamilton, ‘Look Down’ in Les Mis, ‘Dancing Through Life’ from Wicked. Meanwhile, solo numbers are like a soliloquy, revealing the character’s internal world – ‘Maybe This Time’ from Cabaret, ‘She Used To Be Mine’ from Wicked, and ‘Being Alive’ from Company. The mark of a sub-par musical, in my opinion, is that the songs don’t feel like a natural result of the actions of the characters – they don’t convey emotions to the audience, they dictate and demand the desired emotional response – or as video-essayist Jenny Nicholson put it, “I guess I feel sad now, because the sad song is playing!”
Of course the world of television soundtracks is not the same as the world of musical theatre. Pre-existing music is licensed, not usually written specifically with the plot/characters of the programme in mind. Yet I cannot help but feel that the same issue applies. I can’t help but feel like the same is true of many of the musical moments of The Summer I Turned Pretty. I believe that part of the issue is simply the sheer number of songs – which I previously alluded to. During last week’s episode (Last Kiss) I set a timer to measure the amount of time between songs. During the hour-long episode there were eight songs in total, and the longest gap between songs playing was a mere seven minutes. How do they fit so many into an episode? One thing that I’ve noticed is that the music often kicks in at the very beginning of a new scene. This means that before characters have had a chance to speak to each other, the audience is primed to experience the desired emotion – before the script has done the work to merit it. The music continues to play as characters talk to each other, filling in the pauses and gaps between dialogue. Does the music underscore the emotional current of the scene? Or does it exist only to fill the significant silences?
Songs are clearly often chosen to reflect the inner-state of a character’s emotions and perspective. This is shown most effectively in the episodes that play with the point-of-view character, where the artists chosen better reflect their respective tone. When Jeremiah is telling the story we hear Frank Ocean, BROCKHAMPTON, and Niall Horan. When it’s Conrad we get classic-rock (The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison) and the music of soul-artist Otis Redding. That is not to say that the show’s pop music wasn’t chosen as carefully – those artists and genres make sense in a show narrated by Belly, who is a teenager for the bulk of it. What I do take issue with is the fact that Belly’s own voice is shockingly underutilised in favour of angsty Olivia Rodrigo songs. This is strange considering the show made the active decision to incorporate first-person narration when the books were written in third person. Lately there have been a string of TikToks poking fun at the on-the-nose songs that play over dramatic scenes in reality TV shows like Love Island and The Ultimatum. This is also true of some of this programme’s song choices. When Belly drives away crying we hear “driver’s licence”, when she is ruminating over the news that her boyfriend cheated on her with a girl called Lacie we hear “lacy”, and when she lies in bed reeling over her conflicting feelings for the brothers we hear “making the bed”. These are all songs that I like and could enjoy hearing on a television programme, but the sheer volume of them (both in terms of the quantity and the actual level of sound which is at risk of drowning out the concurrent dialogue) and their over-literal lyrics dampen the impact that they could have. None of these songs were written specifically for the show, but sometimes it feels like scenes were written with a specific list of songs in mind.
Another issue I have is that the show seems to have changed strategies with its soundtrack in its latest season. Instead of selecting songs that go on to become popular, the creative team seem to be working backwards from a list of songs that have already gone viral – even when they do not necessarily fit the story. “Manchild” by Sabrina Carpenter stuck out to me as it was only released two months ago and had no lyrical relevance to the scene. However, this song is at least tonally consistent and both the artist and the show appeal to the same demographic. What was far more egregious was the use of the song “No Surprises” by Radiohead in the third episode following an argument about an engagement. It felt entirely misplaced and emotionally undeserving – and this feeling was exacerbated only a few weeks later when I saw how beautifully the song was used in the season-six premiere of House MD. That is not to imply that the song is ‘too good’ for this show, but I wonder if it would have been chosen if not for the song’s recent popularity in TikTok edits?
That is not to say that the show’s use of music is never effective. For example, I felt that both Mayonnaise by The Smashing Pumpkins and XO by Beyonce were used very movingly in Season 2. On the pop-side, no song could better encapsulate the atmosphere and tone of the series than “Cruel Summer” by Taylor Swift back in Season One. This is the show’s soundtrack at its best. At its worst (and with so many songs there’s a lot of that) it is over-commercialised, overly-literal, and far too reliant on pandering to the fans of pop-stars. It reminds me of some of the criticisms of the later seasons of Glee – contemporary music had a place in the soundtrack from the beginning, but eventually it seemed that the showrunners were writing episodes designed to squeeze in as many charting songs as possible instead of choosing songs that suited the stories. While I wouldn’t say that the writing of TSITP has gone quite that far, I fear that the pressure to remain relevant is evident. If a song is already trending online before it’s used in your show, it will be much easier for the corresponding moment to circulate online – providing free promotion once you’ve paid those pesky licensing fees.
Does all this really matter? Perhaps the teenage melodrama is getting to me. If I take off the rose-tinted glasses I can acknowledge that there are plenty of TV shows from my past that had similar issues. Granted there wasn’t the same pressure on showrunners to maximise TikTok engagement, but plenty of ‘trashy’ teen dramas have relied too strongly on an on-the-nose soundtrack (I’m looking at you, The Vampire Diaries!) or else routinely oversaturated episodes with 10+ songs – I still don’t understand why the producers of Reign, a sensationalised retelling of the life of Mary Queen of Scots, relied so heavily on the discography of The Lumineers. Coincidentally, both shows also feature love triangles between their leading-ladies and a pair of brothers. Perhaps that’s the real problem.
