How to Make a Soundtrack Album for a TV Show

Music supervisors Manish Raval, Tom Wolfe, and Jonathan Leahy tell IndieWire about taking a more holistic approach to the music of "Nobody Wants This" Season 2.

The creative brief couldn’t have been more succinct when music supervisors Manish Raval, Tom Wolfe, and Jonathan Leahy convened with “Nobody Wants This” creator Erin Foster to pitch ideas for her Emmy-nominated comedy’s second season. “It was like all of four minutes over Zoom that started with us saying, ‘We loved the music on Season 1, did you like it?’ Erin said, ‘Yeah.’ So, we just said, ‘Let’s do it again for Season 2, but maybe we can give you a little steroid boost: Let’s make a soundtrack!'”

So began the Aperture Music trio’s hunt for fresh pop songs that would amplify the hilariously stormy romance between Kristen Bell’s gentile Joanne and Adam Brody’s Rabbi Noah. Reaching out to their robust network of record labels, music managers, and other industry contacts, Raval, Wolfe, and Leahy solicited unreleased songs by major artists that were featured in the series and compiled on Interscope Records’ “Nobody Wants This Season 2: The Soundtrack” album.

One of those songs, Selena Gomez’s dance floor banger “In the Dark,” kicks off season two’s final episode as Joanna and Noah arrive at a sun-kissed rooftop party celebrating her sister’s upcoming nuptials. “We knew our characters were coming out of the disastrous Episode 9 when they were probably at their lowest point,” Raval told IndieWire. “We needed to start Episode 10 with something that would snap us out of that and flip the script of what Joanne and Noah are going through, so we used the energy of Selena’s song to propel the momentum.”

Many “Nobody Wants This” tracks come from well-known artists including country star Chris Stapleton, who provided Episode 9’s sparse, acoustic guitar-driven “Heart Letting Go;” Kacey Musgraves, whose brooding “If the World Burns Down” underscores a tough love conversation with Joanne’s sister Morgan (Justine Lupe); and Ariana Grande’s sassy “7 Rings,” which complements the dorky dance moves of Noah’s brother’s Sasha (Timoty Simons) as he twitches to her lyrics “You like my hair? I bought it.”

But there’s always room for new discoveries like Cassandra Coleman, who sings the anthemic “Bite My Tongue.” How did they find her? Raval explained, “A manager who’s a good friend of mine texted me right while we were trying to figure out our quintessential running-back-to-each-other’s-arms moment at the end of the season. He said, ‘Check out this new song that Cassandra made,’ and immediately, it was like “This is the song we need for the moment in the show that I’m looking at right now!”

Raval, Wolfe, and Leahy, working on “Nobody Wants This” with Foster’s music manager husband Simon Tikhman, relied on relationships forged over the course of some four dozen TV shows and movies encompassing “Platonic,” “This is Us,” “Fruitvale Station,” and “Green Book.” Raval, a former rock band drummer, teamed up 28 years ago with Wolfe, who used to manage L.A.’s arthouse Aero Theatre.

“Manish and I kind of fell into the job, actually,” recalled Wolfe. “We had friends who were directing films and leaned on us for musical advice.” Leahy, who previously played guitar in “a million bands you’ve never heard of,” completed the team around 2013 when he, Raval, and Wolfe music-supervised “Girls.” Leahy said, “Being essentially the musician friends of filmmakers is kind of how we all got into the business.”

When the Aperture guys hear a must-have song, they sometimes take an active role in developing a show-ready version. The poignant “Melodies” caught their attention as a demo sent to them by songwriter Savan Kotecha, who collaborated on the tune with Scottish crooner Lewis Capaldi. “It was just the saddest, most heartbreaking song we’d ever heard, so we knew it had to go into the most heartbreaking moment of the season,” said Raval, referring to the gut-punch switcheroo scene when Joanne thinks Noah’s going to say “Let’s give it another try” but instead breaks up with her.

“Lewis Capaldi loved ‘Melodies,’ but he wanted us to record it with a new artist, so we asked Interscope, ‘Who are you excited about on your roster that could nail it?’ They suggested Dermot Kennedy. We loved his voice, so he flew to London and recorded the song. ‘Melodies’ turned into the heartbreak song for the episode, and for the season, really.”

Vocal performance, melody, and groove, of course, play important roles in reinforcing the mood for any given scene. When it comes to lyrics, the Aperture trio steers clear of exposition. “We never need the lyric to say what’s happening in the scene,” said Raval. “Everyone has eyes; they can see what’s happening, so we shy away from being too literal, unless maybe if it’s a joke song and we’re playing it for comedy. But otherwise, you’d be surprised how a viewer can pull something from a lyric and tie it to what’s happening picture-wise, even if it wasn’t intended that way.”

Aperture also avoids getting overly specific when reaching out for unreleased tracks, said Raval. “A&R people, managers, artists, labels — they might ask, ‘Can you give us a brief to write to? Can you give us the scene?’ And we steadfastly say ‘No.’ Just make a great song, and we’ll find a place for it.”

“Finding a place” in the “Nobody Wants This” storyline often entailed mix-and-match sessions on Pro Tools editing software that displayed all 10 episodes of the season. Raval said, “Everything’s in front of us, so when we get a piece of gold like ‘You’ve Got Another Thing Coming’ from Teddy Swims, we can throw it into a scene from episode one. Then we’ll try it over here in episode three.” The soulful cut ultimately played over the end credits of Episode 8. “We create multiple options for the producers, and sometimes we FaceTime them. They might say, ‘The lyric is hitting weird here. Can you put it over there?’ We quickly recut it, show it again: Perfect. That’s kind of the task we took on with this show.”

All together, Raval, Wolfe, and Leahy selected 70 songs for “Nobody Wants This,” in addition to the thousands of music cues they’ve curated over the years. But even now, their quest for the perfect needle drop eludes predictable pathways. “Alchemy — that’s a word I love to use for what we do,” said Leahy. “I mean, it’s fun trading playlists, but nothing compares to listening to a song while you’re watching picture. That’s when you know if it works or not.”