Inside the Perfectly Selected Music of 'Big Little Lies'
Note: This article contains major spoilers from the first six episodes of the HBO drama Big Little Lies and speculation about who is going to get killed.
In the latest episode of Big Little Lies, Madeline (Reese Witherspoon) and Ed (Adam Scott) frantically discuss how their friend Perry (Alexander Skarsgård) broke his urethra after a tennis racket whacked him in the penis. The conversation is sensational, yet what's going on in the background is more interesting. Chloe, the couple's precocious daughter, watches and dances along to a live music performance on TV. Her parents tell her to go to bed. She begs for a few more seconds.
Chloe, you see, is a star. And critics and fans of the show have noticed: Whether writers are wondering if she's a "cyborg" and questioning her NPR-honed tastes or praising her as the show's "beyond-her-years spiritual DJ," the pint-sized curator is an essential part of the show's self-consciously tasteful, slightly sinister milieu. Her iPhone houses your aspirational playlist.
With the eagerly anticipated finale approaching on Sunday, it's worth taking stock of the signature musical moments and figuring out what they reveal about the show's complex, secret-obsessed characters.
The opening credits scene sets the mood
HBO shows are known for their elaborate opening credits sequences -- think of the map in Game of Thrones or the player-piano-powered milk men of Westworld -- but the scenic entry into the world of Big Little Lies is a mellower introduction. Instead of wowing you with special effects, director Jean-Marc Vallée shows you the main characters as they drive through Monterey with their children to school. If anything, the ocean-view trek is similar to the "Woke Up This Morning" journey home to New Jersey that began every episode of the network's most iconic hit, The Sopranos.
What's the secret ingredient of the opening? The moody track that soundtracks the trip. It's called "Cold Little Heart" and it's by British soul singer Michael Kiwanuka, who used a 10-minute version of the track to open up his album Love & Hate last year. While the longer version uses a tension-filled instrumental passage to draw you into the rest of the song's unnerving ambience, a shorter radio-edit is also available. That's probably the take that Reese Witherspoon's always-on-the-go Madeline would prefer, but I like to think that Chloe insists they listen to the extended cut on the way to soccer practice.
The songs speak for the characters
With lyrics about secrets and playing games, "Cold Little Heart" is the perfect opening salvo for a show about deception. The rest of the songs picked for Big Little Lies are similarly on point. When Shailene Woodley's Jane Chapman goes for an angry run, she sings along to Martha Wainwright's cathartic "Bloody Motherfucking Asshole." (That song, oddly enough, was written about the singer's father, folk singer Loudon Wainwright III.) Similarly, the sparse piano ballad "September Song" by Danish songwriter Agnes Obel soundtracks Madeline's sadness when her daughter moves out.
At the same time, the David E. Kelley-penned show also uses music to complement the spiky humor that keeps you tuning in every week. Occasionally songs are used to communicate truths about the one thing money can't buy: taste. In the most recent episode, Zoë Kravitz's yoga-loving mom Bonnie plays Sade's "Cherish the Day" during a tense dinner party. Of course, the much less cool Madeline thought it was an Adele track. It's a small moment, but it's the type of thing a lesser show would skip right over or put too much emphasis on. Big Little Lies lets it sit for just long enough.
The sophisticated use of music is something that didn't exist in Liane Moriarty's novel. Instead, it's an invention of Vallée, who used to be a DJ, and music supervisor Sue Jacobs, who previously worked with the director and producer Witherspoon on the movie Wild. "He goes in knowing that he doesn't want a composer," Jacobs told Vulture in an interview. "He likes working with me in that way -- throw me a bunch of this and I'll throw you a bunch of that. He also knows when he needs an edge or something romantic, because he's telling his story through music and controls it that way."
But what role is music going to play in the finale?
We've already seen Adam Scott rehearsing his rhinestone-speckled impersonation of the King for the big trivia night, which is "Audrey Hepburn and Elvis"-themed. In the sixth episode, jerky dad Nathan (James Tupper) was looking for a more obscure track with which to one-up Scott. Will the last episode end with them facing off in a bloody Elvis-off? Are you ready for some dad-on-dad action?
Sadly, that seems unlikely. While it's been entertaining, the huffing and puffing between Scott and Tupper about Madeline feels like a red herring. Instead, I bet the final confrontation erupts between two characters with the most violent pasts: gun-touting Woodley's Jane and Nicole Kidman's tennis racket-wielding Celeste. Will they join forces? Or will they be at each other's throats? And, most importantly, what song will be playing when the final confrontation goes down?
Whatever the solution, the fates of the characters seem linked to the lyrics in Michael Kiwanuka's theme song. "I can live or I can die," he sings, outlining the two fates for just about every character on this addicting prestige drama. "I believe if I just try."
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