‘Baby Reindeer’ music supervisor Catherine Grieves on curating a playlist with ‘upbeat positivity’ and ‘real melancholy’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“Baby Reindeer” music supervisors Catherine Grieves received her second Emmy nomination, four years after her bid for “Killing Eve,” and it’s better the second time around in one major way. “It’s very exciting and I’m very honored to have been part of such an incredible show. I was nominated before for ‘Killing Eve,’ but it was during lockdown, so I’m even more excited to actually be able to fly to L.A. and actually go rather than watching it on YouTube,” she tells Gold Derby (watch the exclusive video interview above). “So, yeah, far more exciting this time.”
Adapted by Richard Gadd from his one-man show that’s based on his real experience, “Baby Reindeer” follows struggling comedian Donny (Gadd) who is relentlessly harassed and stalked by a woman, Martha (Jessica Gunning), after he gives her a drink on the house at the pub where he works. Grieves, who joined the series during preproduction, curated an eclectic playlist that ranges from ’60s and ’70s rock classics to pensive pop, many of which feature themes of loneliness, obsession and affection — and sometimes utilized ironically.
Take the first episode, which features Roxy Music‘s “Love Is the Drug,” Dusty Springfield‘s “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” and The Turtles‘ “Happy Together,” which closes the episode as Donny reads about Martha’s prior stalking convictions before accepting her Facebook friend request. Gadd specified several songs in the scripts, including “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” and Evie Sands‘ “Angel in the Morning” in the fifth episode, which gave Grieves “a rough starting point to jump off from.”
“There’s a real innocence to them. The show is so dark and deals with so many issues that having these kind of innocent, light love songs from the ’60s and ’70s was a really kind of good place to start and we kind of developed from that,” she explains. “So starting off kind of keeping in the ’60s and ’70s, so we started looking at options, and that obviously develops and becomes contemporary at certain points but all kind of rooted in that sound was always the intention. It’s always helpful to have some kind of creative boundary to work to when using music because there are so many options out there that finding an identity and a tone is what makes a soundtrack successful.”
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Grieves is nominated for the fourth episode, a harrowing flashback that reveals the abuse Donny suffered at the hands of TV writer Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill). Like Donny’s optimism dimming into darkness, the music followed the same trajectory. The episode features Brian Eno‘s “I’ll Come Running (to Tie Your Shoe)” when Donny arrives at the Edinburgh Festival, Jethro Tull‘s “Teacher” when Darrien first gives him cocaine, Wilco‘s “How to Fight Loneliness” when Donny is in a drugged-out stupor, and it closes with Harry Nilsson‘s “One” as Donny acknowledges his self-loathing and shame via voiceover.
“I think the key we talked about for this episode is Donny’s loneliness and finding his real inner voice. It’s really him telling his side of the story. There’s foreboding and things like Jethro Tull’s ‘Teacher’ — it’s quite an upbeat song but it’s about a teacher and someone who’s too influential. It’s really interesting how you can find those songs that have those lyrics that just match so many themes,” Grieves says. “And then ‘One’ by Harry Nilsson at the end is really interesting. … There’s a kind of upbeat positivity to these songs but a real melancholy in the lyrics. And I think that’s a pattern throughout a lot of what we used, kind of keeping the energy up and keeping the music’s use to kind of drive it forward, but really, lyrically, honing in on Donny’s inner feelings.”
Grieves’ favorite track in the series is “Come Wander with Me” by Jeff Alexander, which is featured in the third episode when Martha has perched herself at the bus stop outside Donny’s window. She once tried to use the song for “Killing Eve” but was unable to clear it. “This was the kind of moment of going, ‘C’mon, we can do it!’ And I managed to find a different contact and it all went through and it was fine. It was one of those things of going, ‘I’m really actually pleased that we didn’t use it on ‘Killing Eve’ because then we wouldn’t have used it here,'” Grieves shares. “When you have those songs that are special, but you’re like, ‘Oh, God, this is going to be tricky,’ it’s really nice when you can unstick that and then they get used in the right way.”
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