Music supervisor is a job that is part professional music nerd, part aural detective and part crate-digging business affairs exec. 5 Songs is a Deadline series that highlights the work of these below the line workers through songs and stories.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story chronicles the case of the real-life brothers who were convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez.
While the prosecution argued they were seeking to inherit their family fortune, the brothers claimed – and remain adamant to this day, as they serve life sentences without the possibility of parole – that their actions stemmed out of fear from a lifetime of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents.
The series stars Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez and Nicolas Chavez as Lyle as well as Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny as their murdered parents. Ari Graynor plays attorney Leslie Abramson and Nathan Lane plays Vanity Fair journalist Dominick Dunne.
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The show comes from Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, two people that music supervisors Amanda Krieg Thomas and Anna Romanoff have worked closely with on other series including American Horror Story, American Sports Story, Feud: Capote’s Women and the first season of Monster, which focused on the story of Jeffrey Dahmer.
The pair received the scripts right before the writers strike in 2023 with Krieg Thomas telling Deadline that she will never forget how much music was wanted for the show. “Ryan is so musically driven with a lot of his content,” she added.
Krieg Thomas also pointed to the historical accuracy of the story – the Menendez Brothers did, in fact, play Milli Vanilli’s “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” at their parents’ funeral. “That was a real thing that happened so that was the linchpin of those first few episodes and the sound of the show came out of that,” she added.
Romanoff added that some artists are more hesitant than others when it comes to the subject matter but said that because it’s “handled with care”, and also successful, which helps persuade them. “There’s a track record of songs that have benefited from that,” she said.
THE FIRST SONG YOU LICENSED FOR ‘MONSTERS’?
Romanoff: We started with “Blame It On The Rain”. We knew that we needed to kind of start with the Milli Vanilli of it all because we do have that real moment in the funeral scene. We strategized a lot about how to go about getting all of these songs. Do we go out for everything at once? Do we take a temperature read? We decided that “Blame It On The Rain” is also written by Diane Warren, which is different than the other Milli Vanilli songs. She is obviously a very accomplished songwriter, so we started with that one to get a temperature read, and then when that one was approved, we expanded. Even with “Blame It On The Rain”, there were a lot of uses across the first two episodes.
HARDEST SONG TO LICENSE FOR ‘MONSTERS’?
Romanoff: They’re all hard when you’re trying to convince them to be a part of a show like this.
Krieg Thomas: Before we’re going into it, before we know that they’re going to be approved, the ones that are hardest are the ones that are must have, which was Milli Vanilli and Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over”, which we used a lot and was thematically very important. We put a ton of effort into making sure we’re guiding those thrown.
The Monster series as a whole, and this season had it as well, because it’s a period piece, they end up using a lot of TV clips and radio clips or things that just build out the time period in the world that are all authentic. Because you’re not necessarily going to a label or a publisher, it’s not a big band or a songwriter that you’ve heard of, those can take a lot of time to track down. We used a bunch of clips from Billionaire Boys Club, which was a real [1987] movie that the brothers watched and said that’s where they got a lot of inspiration for what they did. We have some scenes where they’re watching clips from that and we had to clear the score. They don’t have the impact of a big montages song but you need it to build out the world and those can take a lot of time. You’re dealing with larger companies and people who don’t do licensing all of the time.
I thought Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies” might be a challenge because it’s Fleetwood Mac’s.
Krieg Thomas: That’s a deeper cut so that was a fun one to get into. It was nice to be able to use that as opposed to one of their bigger ones. This is a series where sometimes people just don’t want to be associated with it, it doesn’t matter what’s happening in the scene and we definitely had a few of those where the theme wasn’t controversial, but they just don’t want to be associated with this. We have to be really strategic and we took a very thoughtful approach from the beginning, and I think that really helped us. [Fleetwood Mac] definitely don’t approve everything but we took a delicate approach with these bigger artists from step one, instead of taking it quickly and then backtracking when need to. We just were really deliberate every step of the way and I think that helped help the runway with some of these artists, like Milli Vanilli or Crowded House or Vanilla Ice or Fleetwood Mac. We do a lot of Ryan Murphy television shows, where he is pushing the envelope so we’re no stranger to this delicate dance of what the story being told is.
THE MOST SIGNIFICANT SONG IN ‘MONSTERS’?
Romanoff: For me, it’s “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” by Milli Vanilli.
Krieg Thomas: “I’m Gonna Miss You”, for sure. Another song that people never talk about but the label was really pleased was “Dirty Cash (Money Talks)” by The Adventures of Stevie V. It’s so crazy, I remember reading it in the script thinking we’re cutting from the prison to the wig and the milk. It is such an out there montage, and a long one too. The song works really well, and the label was willing to get on board, and they were really pleased with how, how it all came out.
THE MOST UNEXPECTED SONG IN ‘MONSTERS’?
Romanoff: The most unexpected song for me, as we were working on it, that came in and now I can’t imagine it not in the show is the opening Kenny G song “Songbird”. It sets the tone of it so well, you have this smooth, easy going thing, and then Lyle turns off the radio and puts on Milli Vanilli. It sets the tone for what the rest of the show will be, their energy taking over.
Krieg Thomas: Anna put it really well about how that energy of that song playing, and then Lyle interrupting, saying ‘Play something better’. A lot of the songs are really unexpected, that’s what makes this, especially you have the likes of Vanilla Ice. I hate to say conventionally unexpected because people are aware of the songs, they’re well known songs, but the nature of them in this context makes it very unexpected in the context of a show about a very brutal murder and both of the songs are very light, fluffy and superficial, almost like pump up songs, which are perfectly expected for these two characters that are all about the wealth and the glamor and the image, but in the sense of kicking off the show with a murder in the first episode, and it is so brutal and so bloody. That sonic template of that type of music against the story, which is a pretty ugly story, is both really expected and unexpected.
FAVORITE SONGS IN ‘MONSTERS’?
Romanoff: My absolute favorite song in the whole show is “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” by Mili Vanilli but in the last episode. When that comes back around and you see it in this completely different context, and you’re seeing the brothers, that hits so hard. The music is such a counter to the story but it feels so heartbreaking in that spot. I really love that one and love that it was able to come back at the end.
Krieg Thomas: I’m going to say “Blame It On The Rain” by Mili Vanilli. We don’t always do end credit songs, but that ends the pilot, where it’s the third use of the song, we’ve heard “Girl You Know It’s True” and “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” and the combo of the band and the recurring use of the song, the idea of that note we’re ending the pilot on: We’re going to blame it on everyone else. We’re going to blame it on everything else. It is totally unexpected, it’s a great call back and also sets the tone for some of the themes that are going to come up in the rest of the series in such a great way.
Milli Vanilli had a moment once this show came out.
Krieg Thomas: I just find it so interesting when those things pop. You can try to predict it. We do work on other shows where we get a lot of questions as to how do we make this a moment? How do we make this song pop? There are some guesses. But really, at the end of the day, it’s always been guesses. I always feel like it’s some magical, elusive combination of the song itself, how it’s used in the scene, what’s happening, what the show is, and who the audience for the show is, and then what’s happening culturally. I don’t know what the actual mathematical equation is, but it feels like some combination of all of those things. “Please Don’t Go” by KC & The Sunshine Band had a resurgence after Dahmer, and Milli Vanilli really popped this season and Crowded House too.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story Tracklisting:
Songbird by Kenny G
Girl You Know It’s True by Mili Vanilli
I’m Gonna Miss You by Mili Vanilli
Blame It On The Rain by Mili Vanilli
Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House
Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice
Dirty Cash (Money Talks) by The Adventures of Stevie V
The Power by Snap!
Little Lies by Fleetwood Mac
Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt
Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee