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.
Bridgerton’s third season finds Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) as she’s finally given up her crush on Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) after hearing him disparage her to his friends last season. Instead, she’s focusing on finding a husband who will respect her independence so she may continue her double life as Lady Whistledown, away from her mother and sisters. Due to her lack of confidence, however, her search doesn’t go so well.
Meanwhile, Colin is back from his summer travels with a new look and major swagger. He is disheartened to learn that Penelope, the one person who always appreciated him as he was, is giving him the cold shoulder. Eager to win back her friendship, Colin helps Penelope boost her confidence so as to attract the perfect husband. But when his lessons start working a little too well, Colin is faced with figuring out what his true feelings for his friend really are.
Complicating matters for Penelope is her rift with Eloise (Claudia Jessie), who has found a new friend in a very unlikely place, while Penelope’s growing presence in the ton makes it all the more difficult to keep her Lady Whistledown alter ego a secret.
Season 3 also welcomed a new showrunner and executive producer in Jess Brownell.
Working closely with Brownell was music supervisor Justin Kamps, who took over from Chop Shop founder Alexandra Patsavas, who moved inhouse at Netflix in 2020. Kamps had worked with Patsavas on season one and took over as sole music supervisor for seasons two and three (and the upcoming fourth season).
Kamps told Deadline that he sat down with Brownell before the scripts were available to get a sense of the themes of the third season including ratcheting up the romantic comedy vibes.
“One of the big focuses of the season was about how you can be your true self, how to bring that out of you. There’s also romantic comedy tropes of two friends finding something more in each other so that gave me some ideas, thinking of classic rom-coms like She’s All That. I was looking at those classic soundtracks, thinking what kind of pop music would be playing in a movie like that these days,” he added.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST SONG YOU LICENSED FOR SEASON 3 OF ‘BRIDGERTON’?
We go in order of the episode order so once we’re working together to cut the episode, we try out song. The first cover in episode one is the cover of Gayle’s “abcdefu” [by Vitula]. That was one of those classic rom com moments of where Penelope is having her makeover moment, or a glow up, or whatever you want to call it, and just coming out and really showing everybody who she is, what she wants to look like. It was a really powerful moment and that song played really well. She’s coming down the stairs in the ball, and everyone’s turning their heads and it was just a fun moment where she’s saying to everybody, ‘This is me and this is how I want to be.’
Technically, that was the first one that we licensed. If you want to look at what song found a spot first, even when we’re shooting, we’re shooting in batches and going in order, we’re often focused on the choreography and getting songs to our amazing choreographer, Jack [Murphy] and he’s always asking me for different types of music. He wanted to work with The Vitamin String Quartet cover of “Happier Than Ever” by Billie Eilish, so very early on that was being used choreography, and that’s one of the songs that ended up making it all the way through to the end of post.
Other than that, we had Shimmer’s cover of “Jealous”, the Nick Jonas song. That is one that I had actually found back when we were working on season two, because we were dealing with a little bit of a love triangle in season two. I thought maybe this could be a good track. It’s interesting to see how that was one of the earlier tracks we were looking at for that season, and then it finds its way in the season three.
THE MOST SIGNIFICANT SONG IN ‘BRIDGETON’ S3?
As far as impact for the season, it’s got to be the Archer Marsh cover “Give Me Everything” [by Pitbull]. Every show is always looking for that viral moment and things that are really going to grab the fan base, and the carriage sequence was always going to be a big moment for us, so we, really had to find the right song. I worked with BMG, who worked with their composer, Archer Marsh, and put together this cover. The energy was on fire and a different sound than a lot of the string quartets that we’ve used in the past. We never have a percussive beat but you can almost feel the beat in this one and you could almost get on the floor and dance to it. It was perfect for this moment, because we’re building up these characters, we’re now seeing them in the third season here, and you’ve seen hints of Penelope loving him, and Colin not reciprocating. But now finally, something’s happening. They’re coming together. Their feelings are overflowing in this carriage in the middle of a heated argument. We literally needed this fist pumping moment for this, and the anticipation of the build of that song is so great. It went on to become a huge viral sensation on Tiktok.
THE MOST UNEXPECTED SONG IN ‘BRIDGERTON’ S3?
That song [“Give Me Everything” by Pitbull] was probably not something that people were expecting, especially for a romance, for this heated moment. Another one that was unexpected for me was the cover of Imagine Dragons’ “Thunder”. That song’s got a big beat and is a powerful song and then we had this cover come in from Thomas Mercier and Théo Croix and it was super playful and light, much different sounding than the than the original song. Another thing that was unexpected about it is, for the first time, we got to use a cover over a Lady Bridgerton moment, hinting that maybe something’s happening for her and Lord Anderson. We always have all the characters getting their big cover moments and maybe something’s going to happen there. It was fun to sneak in a cover for her in that moment.
When you say that cover “came in”, you make it sound incredibly easy. What leads to that coming in?
We’ve been lucky. On the first season it was tricky, because there was not a lot of string quartets that existed that were doing this kind of thing, other than The Vitamin String Quartet. After that season blew up, there was a lot more interest, during season two, and even further in season three, from independent string quartets, independent composers that really want to try their hand at arranging something. I’m often reaching out to these independent string quartets and composers who are interested to arrange something for the show with song ideas. They take those and come back to me, sending over demos. There’s usually a demo step where they’re sending ideas, and I’m commenting on whether or not the arrangement sounds right for the show. Sometimes they add instruments that we don’t typically use. There’s notes back and forth and eventually get a final version that I can present to the show. There’s a lot of creative discussions and trying to go through the history of pop music to find the right song.
There’s also a lot of pop songs that are huge hits that just don’t quite make sense sometimes. We’re trying to find the right thing, asking what would sound appropriate as a string quartet and has a great melody that can really translate in that way. It’s tough to do, but I really enjoy it. It’s a fun to hear the transformation of the song into the string quartet.
HARDEST SONG TO LICENSE FOR ‘BRIDGERTON’ S3?
Luckily, this season, when we reached out to everybody, everyone was very excited to be involved. We didn’t really have too many clearance challenges, other than sometimes having to follow up and wait and send people clips. For Taylor Swift, for example, we needed to be a little bit more careful there, and make sure to send a clip, because they wanted to see how the songs were being used for both of her songs, before agreeing.
At this point, the show is a known quantity and the response to the covers is always incredible so people are much more excited to be involved. This season, we were really lucky to not have any pushback from people.
How many artists want to be incredibly hands on in terms of placement?
Everyone’s very focused on syncs right now, because it’s one of the great places that you can still potentially make some good money as an artist. For these big artists, once you have these catalogs, once you start getting into these mega hits that Taylor Swift or Coldplay have, you really want to be careful. People understandably want to be careful with those songs, because it’s going to be their legacy and these are the biggest songs in the world. Some of them want to know exactly how it’s being used and we’re never trying to hide anything with them. We’re happy to share the scenes when we can and make everyone feel comfortable that we are using it in a respectful way that enhances the song and can bring further value and maybe new ears to their music. You never want to be the person who’s trying to hide around something, because they’re going to find out, and then it’s going to be more trouble for you in the future.
BIGGEST TREASURE HUNT YOU’VE HAD ON ‘BRIDGERTON’?
On Bridgerton, we’re mostly dealing with these huge hit songs so most of them have had their splits ironed out for years. They’ve already been licensed other places so I haven’t really had to go on a treasure hunt to find a writer or anything, but I would say that on this show, I have this perpetual treasure hunt every season. That is to find recognizable pop songs that are in three, four time for a waltz. This is the big problem. There aren’t a ton of hits that are written in three, four. There’s some that you might think are but they’re actually in six, eight or 12. Sometimes you can cheat for a waltz, depending on the tempo. But really we’re trying to find stuff that is in three, four time that makes sense for the show, and is a very popular song, that’s very hard to find.
Where do you start that process?
I literally went to Google and asked if anyone has already sorted out what popular music is in three, four. We’re also reaching out to our partners too, to see if anyone has any but a lot of the lot of times, not everyone that works in the [music] business is also a musician, so not everyone understands three, four times signature.
We’ve had some intrepid arrangers take songs that are in four, four and make an arrangement of it that is in three, four for us. It’s always interesting to hear what changes and if it loses its melody a little bit because now it’s now in a different time signature, so we’ve had some fun doing that as well. A lot of this is done for our choreographer, because waltz is a major type of dance that he always wants to use and so that’s my biggest trigger on every season, just [wondering] if anyone is going to write a new, three, four hit.
Bridgerton: Season 3 Track Listing
Episode 1
Gayle’s abcdefu covered by Vitula
Episode 2
BTS’ Dynamite covered by Vitamin String Quartet
Nick Jonas’ Jealous covered by Shimmer
Episode 3
Sia’s Cheap Thrills covered by Vitamin String Quartet
Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever by Vitamin String Quartet
Episode 4
Taylor Swift’s Snow on the Beach (feat. Lana Del Rey) covered by Atwood Quartet
Pitbull, Afrojack and Ne-Yo’s Give Me Everything (feat. Nayer) covered by Archer Marsh
Episode 5
Ariana Grande’s POV covered by Strings From Paris
Episode 6
Imagine Dragons’ Thunder covered by Thomas Mercier and Théo Croix
Demi Lovato’s Confident – Stripped covered by Archer Marsh
Episode 7
Coldplay’s Yellow covered by Vitamin String Quartet
Taylor Swift’s You Belong With Me covered by Duomo
Episode 8
Ellie Goulding’s Lights – Stripped covered by Archer Marsh
Kris Bowers’ and Tori Kelley’s All I Want
