Music

Amazon Prime’s adaptation of the Jack Reacher novels to an action TV series has become an unsurprising streaming hit, and the show’s classic rock- and blues-dominated soundtrack has been one of the big reasons why. Songs from Howlin’ Wolf and The Rolling Stones packed the first season, while the second season started to mix in some spiky alt-rock standbys from the likes of Talking Heads and Toadies.

Signature Synch: In the tense climactic scene to the second season’s penultimate episode, the titular Reacher (Alan Ritchson) surrenders himself to antagonist Shane Langston (Robert Patrick) as Soul Coughing’s “Super Bon Bon” rumbles pensively in the background — a placement that led to a 342% streaming gain for the song for the week following the episode’s debut, according to Luminate.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Simple Man” (No. 2, Jan. 2024)

Another Amazon Prime adaptation, this one of the post-apocalyptic role-playing video game franchise that’s existed in some form or another since 1997. Set over 270 years in the future, Fallout follows the game series’ lead by actually featuring pop music that mostly dates back to the 1940s and ’50s, with its pilot featuring standards by the likes of Nat “King” Cole and Perry Como, as well as a pair of early country classics by Johnny Cash.

Signature Synch: The Ink Spots’ love song “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” — which soundtracked multiple early entries in the Fallout series — plays over the end credits of the show’s second episode, and led to the 86-year-old song doubling in streams to over a million weekly plays within weeks of its airing.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: The Ink Spots, “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” (No. 1, Apr. 2024)

At a time when Netflix has become famously stingy with renewals, this series based on romance novelist Robyn Carr’s Virgin River books has had notable longevity, with a sixth season currently in production. The drama about a small town midwife in Northern California draws heavily on music to drive the emotion of the series. Often Virgin River dips into the catalogs of established artists like Bryan Adams and Norah Jones, but more often the show’s soundtrack has prominently spotlighted independent singer-songwriters like Ben Wagner and Katie Barbato. “In the past year or so, our talent has been keen to have their songs placed in shows like Virgin River,” says Marni Condro, Vice President in Film & TV at Universal Music Publishing Group.

Signature Synch: With huge vinyl sales and viral TikTok moments, Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 classic Rumours has been as relevant as ever in recent years, with songs finding prominent synchs in Wednesday, Daisy Jones & The Six, Super Pumped and Outer Range. Months after band member Christine McVie’s 2022 death, one of her signature Rumours cuts, “Songbird,” was prominently featured in a season 5 episode of Virgin River named after the song. A few episodes later, the song became a recurring motif via a cover by Jake Etheridge.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Earth Wind & Fire, “September” & Lizzo, “Good as Hell” (both No. 1; Sept. 2023 and Nov. 2020, respectively)

While music synchs had not necessarily been a major part of the first three seasons of HBO’s hit 2010s mystery serial True Detective, they played a much larger role in the show’s Alaska-set fourth installment (subtitled Night Country), which debuted in early 2024 and starred Jodie Foster and Kali Reis. The season led to huge Shazam returns for haunting indie ballads from Jim James, Mazzy Star and Marika Hackman (covering Lykke Li’s “I Follow Rivers”), and also included an unlikely classic pop synch in the Beatles’ version of “Twist & Shout,” which recurred throughout the season.

Signature Synch: The most head-turning song usage in Night Country was still certainly Billie Eilish’s spooky 2019 hit “Bury a Friend,” used as the show’s opening credits theme — which Condro calls an “incredibly memorable” placement.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Mazzy Star, “Into Dust” (No. 3, Feb. 2024)

The Umbrella Academy sprang from the mind of an actual rock star, so it’s not surprising that music plays a key role in the Netflix superhero series. Based on a Dark Horse Comics title created by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way, the surreal sci-fi story spans decades and includes time jumps. Appropriately, The Umbrella Academy — which returns for a fourth and final season in August — features a lively mix of older tracks by Aretha Franklin and The Lovin’ Spoonful, along with contemporary bands like The Struts and The Heavy. The show’s ensemble cast includes R&B icon Mary J. Blige, who covered Faces’ classic rock staple “Stay With Me” for the show’s first season, while Way himself offered a spin on Simon & Garfunkel’s “Hazy Shade of Winter.”

Signature Synch: ‘80s alternative staples like The Cure and Billy Idol are a bedrock element of The Umbrella Academy’s soundtrack. The show’s music nerd pedigree is epitomized, however, by “The Order of Death,” a more obscure 1984 album track by the John Lydon-led post-punk outfit Public Image Ltd. –which appeared in a season 2 episode, as well as in other buzzy dramas like Mr. Robot and Industry.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: KISS, “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” (No. 1, Aug. 2020)

“Beyond the scripted shows, you have the reality powerhouse of Love Island, which has millions of viewers,” says Kat Basolo, Vice President of Creative Synch at Kobalt about the different types of shows that can drive synch interest. “While the fees are not as lucrative for this type of show, the exposure to such a massive audience has helped skyrocket streaming numbers for songs used within the show.” A globally popular dating reality franchise with over 20 international versions and spinoffs, Love Island has become a fixture of American TV, with the U.S. version streaming on Peacock and the original British series also pulling in stateside viewers on Hulu. The American series has licensed over 1800 songs since premiering in 2019, from evergreen hits by Kool & The Gang and Britney Spears to contemporary acts like Lizzo and Tones And I.

Signature Synch: Sabrina Carpenter’s 2019 album track “Looking at Me,” which predates her more recent Hot 100 breakout success by years, has become one of her most streamed songs thanks largely to its TV synch uses — including season 5 of Love Island and its 2023 spinoff Love Island Games.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Billie Eilish, “Bad Guy” (No. 5, June 2003)

Apple TV+’s signature comedy, Ted Lasso, ran its course with a third and final season last year. But co-creator Bill Lawrence already has another heartstring-tugging sitcom for the streamer. Shrinking stars Jason Segel and Harrison Ford as therapists, and like Ted Lasso, memorable needle drops have been a big part of the show’s charm. “I definitely remember strong buzz and activity following the uses we landed on Shrinking,” says Marty Silverstone, President of Global Sync at Primary Wave. “That’s a show that uses music really, really well.”

Signature Synch: Shrinking frequently features Gaby (Jessica Williams) singing along with her car radio — and in the show’s most widely discussed scene from the fourth episode, her co-worker Paul (Ford) catches a ride with Gaby and joins in her singalong with Sugar Ray’s 1999 hit “Every Morning.” Ford personally chose the song for the scene, and Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath was thrilled: “My jaw fell to the floor,” McGrath told Stereogum after the episode aired last year. “You license a song, you don’t know how they’re going to use it. Rarely does someone sing it a cappella along with the track… And rarely is that person Han Solo.”

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Rosa Linn, “Snap” (No. 1, Mar. 2023)

Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes signed a lucrative development deal with Netflix in 2017. And Netflix quickly reaped the rewards of that deal when the first Shondaland series under the deal, the historical romance Bridgerton, rapidly became Netflix’s most watched original series upon its 2021 debut. Fitting the show’s frothy, playful take on Regency-era high society, Bridgerton’s soundtrack heavily features orchestral renditions of 21^st century pop songs like the Vitamin String Quartet’s takes on Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” and Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” A popular prequel spinoff, 2023’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, continued that musical theme, and the main series returned for a third season on May 16th.

Signature Synch: Upping the ante from Bridgerton’s established string quartet covers, Universal Music’s team helped Queen Charlotte launch with a major star appearing on the orchestral re-recording of one of her best known songs. “Queen Charlotte’s Global Orchestra collaborated with Alicia Keys on her massive hit ‘If I Ain’t Got You.’ It was integrated seamlessly in both the show and marketing campaign,” says Marni Condro. “We knew the success of Bridgerton. We knew this was going to be something powerful.”

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: JPOLND, “The End” (No. 2, Jan. 2021)

One of the shows that first helped cement synch placement as a crucial element of the modern music industry — back in the mid-to-late ’00s, at the peak of the iTunes era — ABC medical drama Grey’s Anatomy helped turn singles by artists like The Fray, Snow Patrol and Anna Nalick into stateside smashes. But not only is the show still going strong on Thursday nights nearly two decades later, it still has major impact with its soundtrack choices. “Let’s show a little love for a good old fashioned Grey’s Anatomy placement,” says Jonathan Palmer, Senior Vice President of Creative Synch at BMG. “That can still help break an artist or reactivate a catalogue.”

Signature Synch: Probably still The Fray’s “How to Save a Life” in the season two (2006) episode “Superstition,” which helped to define not only the show’s musical sweet spot, but ensured that piano-led pop-rock would stick as one of the dominant sounds on VH1 and top 40 radio for a solid two-three year period in the late ’00s.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Anson Seabra, “Walked Through Hell”; SHAED, “Trampoline”; Andy Grammer, “Don’t Give Up on Me” (all No. 1s; Mar. 2021, Mar. 2020 and Oct. 2019, respectively)

The soundtrack to Netflix’s Beef, heavy on ’90s and early ’00s alt-rock radio staples, both added to the show’s ceaseless tension and emotionally fraught atmosphere, and helped to ground the show’s characters and story in a common musical language. And while many shows of its ilk would either play it safe with can’t-miss classics of the era or use it as a chance to show off the depths of their period CD collections, Beef mostly opted for big hits by bands not as frequently repped for in 2024 — like Bush, Hoobastank and Grant Lee Buffalo — resulting in countless unexpectedly resonant musical moments of revived interest. (The show’s award-winning first season was designed as a mini-series, but according to reports, is being reworked currently for a potential second season.)

Signature Synch: Smashing Pumpkins’ classic Siamese Dream deep cut “Mayonaise” soundtracking the season’s closing hospital montage is easily one of the most indelible synch moments of the decade.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Incubus, “Drive” (No. 2, Apr. 2023)

When You debuted on the Lifetime network in 2018, it was a strange little cult show, a psychological thriller from the perspective of a charming and intelligent stalker and murderer, Joe (Penn Badgley). Moving to Netflix a year later, You become an unlikely hit, thanks in part to a stylish modern rock soundtrack of up-and-coming bands and established acts like Radiohead and Vampire Weekend. With its fifth and final season currently in production, You is a hot commodity for music licensing, in part because musicians themselves watch it. “Artists and songwriters are genuine fans, which makes landing a synch placement [on You] that much more exciting and rewarding,” says Basolo.

Signature Synch: The darkly romantic songs Bill Dess records under the name Two Feet that became a viral sensation on SoundCloud are a perfect aesthetic match for You, with songs appearing in both the third and fourth seasons. The bluesy “Love is a Bitch,” an early single from Two Feet’s pre-major label DIY days, soundtracks a scene of a socialite unsuccessfully attempting to seduce Joe.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Taylor Swift, “Exile” (No. 1, Oct. 21)

As one of the most acclaimed and buzzed-about shows on TV, HBO’s The White Lotus could easily be a career-maker for whatever pop or indie acts it wanted to feature. But Mike White’s hotel-themed serial primarily features music authentic to its locale, with its Sicily-set second season mostly featuring classic Italian singers like Domenico Modugno and Fabrizio De André. That isn’t stopping publishers from trying to place their songs on White Lotus, though: UMPG boasts that they were able to place 14 songs on the second season through their Italian office, while Primary Wave’s Marty Silverstone (who refers to the show as “a trophy”) says he was chasing down Italian versions of songs owned by PW to try to get them on the show.

Signature Synch: The biggest musical moment in White Lotus to date is still the use of composer Cristobal Tapia De Veer’s “Renaissance” in its second season’s opening credits — a theme which became something of a cultural phenomenon, leading to hundreds of thousands of weekly streams and even a professional house remix.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: La rappresentante di lista, “Ciao Ciao” (No. 5, Dec. 2022)

A horror-leaning mystery thriller about characters who are forever stuck in the mid-’90s after suffering a variety of horrific and inexplicable traumas as teens, the music to Showtime’s Yellowjackets is appropriately fixated on the post-grunge era both in its flashbacks and current-day scenes. Given the show’s predominantly female cast, particular emphasis is put on the female-led alt rock of the period: Artists like Hole, Tori Amos, Belly, Garbage and The Cranberries, whose songs all add to the show’s fevered intensity, and have enjoyed bumps in consumption as a result of the exposure. “For ‘90s vintage repertoire, we are wild about “Yellowjackets,” of course,” says BMG’s Jonathan Palmer.

Signature Synch: PJ Harvey’s enigmatically foreboding and vividly atmospheric “Down by the Water,” used during a bonfire scene in the show’s pilot episode, brilliantly set the tone for the music in the series to come.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: The Cranberries, “Zombie” (No. 4, May 2023)

The Addams Family jumped from the pages of The New Yorker to primetime television in 1964, and the creepy and kooky family of monsters has been a pop culture fixture ever since. And the franchise has reached yet another new generation with a spinoff starring Jenna Ortega as a teenage Wednesday Addams. Wednesday’s 2022 debut season on Netflix was an immediate hit, thanks to director Tim Burton’s trademark morbidly campy aesthetic and an omnivorous soundtrack, ranging from Roy Orbison to Dua Lipa.

Signature Synch: Wednesday’s fourth episode featured an instantly iconic school dance scene with Ortega cutting a rug to cult band The Cramps’ 1981 cover of the rockabilly obscurity “Goo Goo Muck.” Streaming numbers soared not just for the Cramps track, but also for Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary,” which was featured in a popular TikTok edit of the scene.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Beach House, “Space Song” (No. 3, Nov. 2022)

With Taylor Swift at the height of superstardom right now, plenty of shows are clamoring to use her songs, from You to The Good Doctor. But Amazon Prime’s hit series based on a trilogy of young adult novels by Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty, has made Swift’s music into almost a recurring character, a constant comforting voice that seems to narrate the story. Other artists like Lana Del Rey and Gin Blossoms appear in the show’s song score, but Swift is ever-present. “In terms of the shows that I’m constantly getting asked about from writers and artists and they really wanna be a part of – it’s often in the YA space,” says Condro. “And it makes sense that you have a built-in audience, and a teenage audience, and a music-buying audience.”

Signature Synch: Over a year before Swift released 1989 (Taylor’s Version), a re-recording of her 2014 album, “This Love (Taylor’s Version)” made its debut in the trailer for the first season of The Summer I Turned Pretty. In the series, the song soundtracks a pivotal moment, the first kiss between Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Belly (Lola Tung).

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Guns N’ Roses, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” (No. 1, July 2023)

Music was baked into HBO’s adaptation of video game series The Last of Us from the very first episode, with the pilot establishing the plot point of characters communicating to each other over the airwaves via coded song selections. But the first season’s musical selections quickly grew beyond that soundtrack framing device, with picks that helped build its characters and make for some of the decade’s most unforgettable TV moments. “I think the best kind of surprises are the ones where you don’t expect that it’s gonna [make a huge impact],” says Wende Crowley, SVP of Film/TV for Sony Music Publishing — who placed Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again” in the pilot episode, leading to a 221% streaming gain for the 1987 synth-rock classic. “No one expected The Last of Us was gonna do what it did, but it was such a great mover for the song and for the catalog.”

Signature Synch: No one who ever watched the “Long, Long Time” episode will likely soon forget about its use of Linda Ronstadt’s 1970 ballad of the same name — with the song serving as the emotional centerpiece for the most tearjerking television love story that absolutely nobody saw coming, resulting in the song becoming a chart-topping hit again in 2023.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Placement: a-ha, “Take on Me” (No. 1, Feb. 2023)

With two rapturously acclaimed seasons under its belt and its third go-round set to kick off in late June, FX on Hulu’s The Bear is among the most beloved shows on TV or streaming right now — and its soundtrack is a big part of that. With a varied but coherent set of tunes primarily focused on earnest ’80s and ’90s rock — the kind you could see the show’s 30- and 40-something, Chicago-bred characters having grown up on — but mixing in the occasional classic rock deep cut and timely massive pop hit (with even Taylor Swift making a memorable S2 appearance), The Bear exemplifies the concept of music serving as an additional character on a TV show. “Our clients and their reps love The Bear, and so do we,” says Silverstone. “It’s a show leaning into catalog in really interesting ways.”

Signature Synch: If it’s not that cathartic Richie singalong to “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” it’s probably the use of R.E.M.’s minor hit “Strange Currencies” as a sort of recurring love theme for protagonist Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and longtime crush Claire (Molly Gordon) in Season Two — featured in a new remix that even got a new video and digital release as a result of its Bear usage.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Fine Young Cannibals, “She Drives Me Crazy” (No. 7, June 2023)

In a business that traditionally chased young and urban viewers, Yellowstone stands out as a massive red-state hit that skews older. Likewise, Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount Network drama about Montana ranchers has also become a serious tastemaker in genres that scripted TV rarely highlights, prominently featuring young neo-traditionalist artists like Zach Bryan and Jackson Dean before country radio embraced them. Yellowstone’s final handful of episodes will begin airing in November, but with two spinoffs already on the air and three more in production, Sheridan’s shows will likely continue to be hugely profitable and influential for years to come.

Signature Synch: “For traditional and contemporary country, it’s all about Yellowstone, which helped launch our own Lainey Wilson to stardom,” says Palmer. Wilson was still an independent artist when one of her early singles, “Workin’ Overtime,” appeared in Yellowstone’s season 2 premiere. Since then, Wilson has racked up a half dozen more Yellowstone synchs — while also carving out an acting role on the show, as aspiring country singer Abby — as well as a string of Country Airplay No. 1s and a Grammy.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Lainey Wilson, “Watermelon Moonshine” (No. 1, Dec. 2022)

Stranger Things, a supernatural romp through the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, has been one of Netflix’s biggest hits since it first premiered in 2016. And with its 1980s setting, Stranger Things has become a boon for any artist with a large catalog of older hits, with the show frequently featuring nostalgic old MTV hits as well as less-obvious needle drops from the Me Decade. Metallica’s 1986 song “Master of Puppets,” an eight-minute thrash-metal masterpiece from before the band crossed over to mainstream stardom, belatedly became a Hot 100 top 40 hit in 2022. And it wasn’t even the most notable streaming sensation from the fourth season of Stranger Things. “It’s injected a new bloodline into some older songs from the ‘80s,” says Scott Cresto, Executive Vice President of Synchronization Licensing & Marketing at Reservoir.

Signature Synch: “Running Up That Hill” was Kate Bush’s biggest American hit in 1985, peaking at No. 30 on the Hot 100, a far cry from the British art pop icon’s chart-topping success in her homeland. The song’s prominent placement in multiple episodes of the fourth season of Stranger Things, however, propelled “Running” back up the charts bigger than ever in 2022, with the song reaching a new Hot 100 peak of No. 3. The placement likely even played a role in Bush finally getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Metallica, “Master of Puppets” & Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill” (both No. 1; July 2022 and May-June 2022, respectively)

Other shows might’ve been responsible for bigger individual song bumps this decade, but just about every publisher Billboard talked to for this list had the same answer about what show their clients are most frequently asking about getting featured on in 2024: HBO’s Euphoria. (“That show comes up in every meeting with every writer I talk to,” says Condro.) No TV show right now is as culture-shifting or as immediately impactful as Sam Levinson’s sensory-overload teen melodrama, and no show features a wider swath of music on its soundtrack — from ’70s and ’80s top 40 hits and alternative deep cuts to haunting modern-day R&B and screechingly futuristic hyper-pop — with every song featured somehow seeming to profit equally from the exposure.

Signature Synch: Many to choose from, but perhaps none more telling than Gerry Rafferty’s 1978 top 20 Hot 100 soft-rock hit “Right Down the Line,” which became perhaps the least-predictable streaming hit of 2022 after being featured in a suspenseful scene at a drug dealer’s apartment in the season two premiere.

Highest-Peaking Top TV Songs Hit: Labrinth & Zendaya, “I’m Tired”; Gerry Rafferty, “Right Down the Line”; Billie Eilish & Rosalía, “Lo Vas a Olvidar”; Labrinth & Zendaya, “All for Us” (all No. 1; Feb.-Mar. 2022, Jan. 2022, Jan. 2021 and Aug. 2019, respectively)