Interview with Jen Malone, the music supervisor of Euphoria and Atlanta
As well as The Resident, Dispatches From Elsewhere, The Umbrella Academy among many, many others.
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Are you living to work or working to live? There’s a big difference there, and today’s interviewee knows it first-hand. Last year, I was one of the many people who saw Euphoria and fell in love with the soundtrack of it, and as it happens every time I fall in love with the soundtrack of a movie or tv series, after the first episode I went to IMDB to find more info on the music supervisor, Jen Malone. Skimming her filmography, I immediately connected the dots when I saw Atlanta, and when I read her story I developed an even stronger admiration. She started her career in PR, working for Nine Inch Nails, Portishead, Marilyn Manson and Prodigy, to name a few, then after some time she realized her enthusiasm for the job was slowly dying out. So she went back to teaching yoga, her first love. One day, she went to the movies to see Iron Man, and just as AC/DC’s Back In Black started playing, she knew what she wanted to become. The rest, as they say, is history, and she told me something about it in a little chat on Zoom, from LA to Milan, that you can listen up or read below!
How are you doing and how’s the situation there right now?
Things are good, work is picking up, shows are starting to shoot, my two employees, my two girls are healthy and inspired, and family is good, husband’s good, cat’s good, so you know I just… I have to just think about those things and not… the state.
So let’s think about the past for a minute to cheer us up a little bit
Yes!
I read all about your journey to becoming a music supervisor and I really find it fascinating and inspiring. You came into the industry as a publicist for rock bands, then switched to teaching yoga and then discovered that the music supervisor exists! I’m curious to know, prior to all of that, what did you study and how did your passion for music develop?
So I went to Northeastern University and I went there because it’s a co-op school, so you work for 6 months and you go to school for 6 months, and that’s like built into the curriculum. And I was a music industry major. Originally, I thought I wanted to be in like in professional theater and work for Nederlander or some of the big producers and stuff. But there just wasn’t as many opportunities there… I just, I don’t know, just everything shifted and I wanted to get into mainstream music. And so I was a music industry major and one of my first co-ops was with a company called Formula PR. Formula no longer exists, is now called Magnum, but it was the publicity firm for Nine Inch Nails, and Marilyn Manson, and Portishead, Chemical Brothers and just… you know Nine Inch Nails has always and will always be my favorite and it was them that, you know, really… When it came time to do a co-op, my thought process was very simple. It was: “Well, If I’m going to go work for bands, I want to work for my favorite bands!”. So, Nine Inch Nails being my favorite band, I had the cd of The Downward Spiral, flicked through it and saw the publicity Sue Zimmerman for Formula and I was like… Ok! And I just called and said: “I’m looking for an internship”, and they said: “Ok, come on in!”. And it was a very very small office, not like a big… you know, like I would go to work like this. I just really learned all about publicity and how major labels work and how the print media work and stuff like that. So that was my first internship and then when I went back to college in Boston, I just was kind of… you know, I was there… and this is going to… age me a little but, but when Antichrist Superstar came out for Marilyn Manson, that just blew him up, like that was kind of the record that pushed him into the mainstream, and so being a part of that campaign, you know on such a level as that, when I got back to college and taking like Music Management 101, I was like: “I’ve been dealing with some of the biggest music managers in the music industry”. So I was really bored, I wasn’t challenged and I just started doing PR for local bands and that ended up… I was good at it, more bands were coming to me, and it’s just my PR business just kind of grew from there.
And how old were you when you realized you wanted to become a music supervisor? And also, what did you do to document yourself to do that?
So after I got really burnt out on PR, as working with artists on that level was just exhausting and it became not fun anymore — and I very much believe that I don’t want to do something that I’m not passionate about… like all you do every day it’s work and if you don’t like your job… it’s just a grind — I kind of got into like a really bad period in my life, because you know I didn’t know what I wanted to do. This was in like 2007, right when the market crashed and it was just a really hard time for me. So when we went into the recession, the first thing to go and get caught is promotions, like promotion and PR and marketing and stuff like that, and I was living in Boston and I couldn’t find a job. I knew I did not want to do PR for rock bands and so really all I had was yoga, because I had been teaching yoga for ten years, like before it even got close to what it is now. And then, you know, just really not sure what I wanted to do really… I wasn’t grounded. And then I saw Iron Man and I just saw the AC/DC song and Robert Downey Jr. just being so cocky and great and funny and witty and it was just so big and just got you so pumped for the movie! And I remember watching it and seeing the music supervisor credit roll by and I was like: “I want to do that! I’m going to be a music supervisor!”. About a month later, I immediately started researching and stuff and then in April 2009, I moved out here!
And how did your transition from music coordinator to music supervisor happen?
I don’t really remember kind of my first official music supervisor credited gig, honestly. But you know because I’d always been independent in doing publicity — as I’m not really cut out for corporate life and I don’t think I would thrive in a corporate environment and going to an office every day and having to… you know, I just think I am very independent and I like my autonomy — I was able to just kind of find different gigs, working for different production companies on different shows. I don’t remember my first music supervision official title. The first five years of my career I worked in reality television, which is not sexy, but it’s a really hard job.
Yes, because you don’t have a script you follow…
Exactly! And there’s just so much music in the show and you’re doing so many things. In a music supervisor job capacity, like Euphoria or Atlanta or any scripted show, you have a composer, so you’re really just looking out for the licensed music and on-cameras and stuff like that. In reality, in the shows that I worked on at least, we didn’t have a composer so we worked with production music libraries and worked with editors, kind of putting in like a tension cue to the characters and to the cast members or what’s called like house reality music, so just music like underscore to play when they’re just like fucking around in the house or stuff like that. So, working with that type of music is very very different than working on a show with license music. So I really got to learn how to sit down with editors. In a scripted show, you may have two, three editors tops. In reality, when you get further into the season, I have as many as twelve editors that are working on different parts of different episodes. It’s a lot of music and some others are better with music than others but I found that one of the parts that I really loved about the job overall was to be able to sit in the edit bay and kind of be like: “Ok let’s start the song actually here…”, and being with them on the Avid and be like: “No, back a little more… a little more… a little more… ok, right there! That’s where we’re going to start the song! And then we’re going to cut in to the chorus…and then when she shuts the door we’re going to be out!”. And so I really kind of learned and realized that I loved doing that and I loved almost like music editing and kind of working with music that way and I was able to have that opportunity quite a bit when I ended up music supervising the reality shows. So I do reality TV as a grind. There’s one show that I’ve done seasons 4, 5, 6, 7… I think we just did 8… It’s an MTV Reality Show called Are You The One and I’ve been doing that for so long and as long as they’re doing that show… I don’t know, obviously right now who knows, but that’s my baby and the production company and the editors and everybody, they’re my family. But I think the pivotal moment to get into scripted as a music supervisor was Baskets. And that show I got because I reconnected with a friend of mine from Boston, because there’s a big Boston to LA community out here and we look after each other. I reconnected with her and she said: “I’m working on this show for FX. You do clearance? You know how to do clearance?”, I was like: “Absolutely”, and she asked me: “Can you just clear this one song for me?”, and I said: “Yeah, sure, of course!”. And then it was: “Hey, is this song public domain? Do you have any idea… can you just be our music supervisor?”. So that’s how I got that show! And then… the woman Kaitlin (Woldron i.e.) who’s responsible for everything, after Baskets was over, called me and said: “I’m doing a show, it’s going to be a lot of hip hop, a lot of like mixtape music, it’s going to be really hard, I have no money to pay you…it’s a very very small fee. But it’s with Donald Glover”, and I was like: “Yep, I’m in!”. And that was Atlanta!
Who wouldn’t do that?
Yeah, I mean and then kind of… the rest is history! But Kaitlin actually also brought me in for Euphoria!
Ok!
So she is… she is my everything and I owe her my life and my career, and you know we’re just super tight. And so obviously those two shows kind of changed everything!
In fact, about Atlanta, that must have been an uncommon experience given that Donald Glover is what he is!
Yeah, I mean it was a really great experience, honestly! It was a lot of work, I’ve never dealt with hip hop before and when we’re trying to get all these writers and finding people that were dead, like rappers that were murdered, rappers that were in jail… I mean, it just… it ran the whole gamut. But they also are a family and you know we were all in it together and then when it aired it was just like… holy shit! It was just the same thing for Euphoria, because I think when you’re deep in the production process and you’ve got a million episodes going and there’s just so much going on… I feel like for both shows I was just kind of like underwater. And I couldn’t be objective. I knew I was working on something special for both shows, but I had no idea they would have the impact that they did on a music level.
And what kind of workflow did you establish with Donald Glover on Atlanta, given that he also helped you in the supervision, is that right?
I mean it’s his show, it’s his vision, you know, but because he was shooting and directing and writing and he’s just he’s a man of many talents, he does stuff all the time, all over, in every media, I worked mostly with Hiro (Murai i.e.) and the editor. Hiro directed quite a bit of the episodes. But then it’s just a collaborative process, sometimes the writers, Stephen Glover and Jo Swank and Fam (Udeorji, i.e.) had ideas. It was a lot of collaboration as I think it is on every show, at least every show that I worked on. We’re all making this show to fill our showrunners vision and if it’s the right song it’s the right song, it doesn’t matter who it comes from.
And what was the most difficult scene to supervise for Euphoria, given that that must’ve been a massive work to do!
“All For Us”, the on-camera.
And how did Labrinth come in the picture?
So Lab met Sam… I believe the story is at a party. Labrinth was on before I was involved, so he and Sam had that relationship before I came on board, and then he was in the UK and I was here, and as we really started to get into it I mean I just did not have the bandwidth you know to work with him. I mean, sometimes supervisors work with the composer, sometimes not. We both had our own lanes and Lab worked very closely with Sam and our music editors, whereas for me there were not enough hours in the day to also work with Lab on a regular basis for the score. Now, for All For Us, that was a little bit more back and forth and stuff because first, we had to have Sam approve the verse, what Lab created, and then we had to get Zendaya into the studio. Then we had to get an arrangement created of the marching band and the choir and then… it was just a constant process. I was in the studio when we recorded the marching band and the choir and then working with the choreographer, Ryan Heffington, who does all of Sia’s music videos, and then being there for rehearsals… it was a 6 weeks process. When I say it now it sounds so easy but you know it definitely was not…
No, no, it doesn’t sound easy.
No, it was probably the biggest production that I’ve worked on.
Is there a date for the second season’s production yet or not? Can you say it actually?
Zendaya has mentioned in the press that we have what we’re calling a bridge episode. I don’t know when that’s going to air, but you guys are going to get something! But until we get a hold on this virus… You know to do a show like Euphoria, the season that Sam wants to shoot… we can’t do that with the big cast, like you can’t green screen high school kids at a party, you know what I mean? So it might be a while.
I guess that negotiation is the toughest part of your job…
Like managing the budget and stuff?
That and also clearance of songs.
The people that I work with on the other side, who are the licensing people at the labels and at the publishers, the people that I have to clear music with… they’re amazing and I’m so lucky that everybody I work with I consider my friends, and I can hit them up like: “Hey, is this song going to be able to clear for something like this?”. My job is to maintain the budget and to be fair with everybody, making sure that the songwriters and the masters and everything is fair to both sides. Sometimes I have to ask for favors, sometimes I’m like: “Hey, I actually have more money for this!”. So I wouldn’t say that negotiation is the hardest part of clearance. The hardest part of clearance is the research and finding everybody, getting everybody to sign off and getting the song cleared. The negotiation it’s just: I have a budget, I have to maintain that budget, I have Sam’s vision and that I have to execute, we figure out how to do that.
And is there a film or tv series that you worked on, that you think deserves more recognition?
I worked on this show last year called Dispatches From Elsewhere. It’s a Jason Segel’s show with Andre 3000 and it’s a very different one, there’s no other show like it on TV. I had such a great time with Jason, who’s just amazing, working with him was just fantastic, and Atticus Ross was our composer and some score is phenomenal. There was no popular music, it was all vintage, from the crates, and so it had just such a distinct, different sound than all my other shows. I just think it was such an interesting different show, we had our fans and stuff but I would love for it to get a little bit more love and a bigger audience. We had a great audience, it wasn’t nearly as big as Euphoria or something like that.
That’s true. Do you think that someday you’ll get to work with Trent Reznor on a project?
Absolutely! Absolutely, without a doubt we will work together! 100 percent! I don’t know when but yes…
It’s going to happen.
Yeah, I mean I know he loves Atlanta and it was just funny with the Emmys being like: “Oh! We are now officially collegues!”. Which was insane…
Is there a film or tv series that recently impressed you musically speaking?
I really think the show The Leftovers is phenomenal, which is Damon Lindelof’s first show before Watchmen, and it was the same music supervisor, who’s Liza Richardson. The way that they used music, I thought was incredible. I think the first couple seasons of Fargo was fantastic and I really really enjoyed that, I’m excited to watch the new season. I loved Russian Doll
and how they use the Harry Nilsson song.
Throughout the series, yes!
Yeah, yeah I thought those it was a really cool, kind of music as a character. That song was a character and it was a very strong undeniable vehicle on a music level.
I’m curious to know which other music supervisors you admire.
So many! There’s so many amazing women, especially music supervisors. I think Mary Ramos is phenomenal, obviously Dave Jordan, who does all of the Marvel films, will always be one of my mentors and friends. Season Kent does a phenomenal job with every project she works on, it’s just fantastic. Liza Richardson who does The Leftovers, is great. There are so many people I admire who really do the work! Unfortunately, there are some music supervisors that don’t get their hands dirty and really do what needs to be done on a full music supervisor level and those people… you know, whatever, that’s fine, you do you but for the people that really truly do the work… yeah, there’s Manish Raval and Tom Wolfe who do Girls and they did a lot of Judd (Apatow i.e.)’s films and…
High Fidelity was great!
That is also a show that I think is so underrated! And the fact that it didn’t get nominated for an Emmy shocked me! Shocked me! Because I just I think that show just never was able to break and I don’t know why, because it was a good show, Zoe Kravitz is amazing and just… on a musical level I just… I was shocked.
Yeah, me too
- Yeah, however, there’s so many women that work in this field, that are just powerhouses! And I’m lucky to call a lot of them my friends and my colleagues and able to be like: “Hey so… what did you do for this, because….” or “how do I do this, this is what my director wants, what am I…”, and they’re always so kind to help me navigate. We have a good community where people call me for that also and I’m happy to help!
This last question is kind of ever-present one in my interviews with music supervisors, because I think that it explains the passion behind the work but it probably needs more time to answer. If you could trace your career in ten songs, which ones would you choose? I know it’s tough…
That’s a fun question, a very good one but it would take me a very long time to put together that playlist! But I would say Head Like a Hole started it all. I’ll tell you the quick story. In high school… I grew up in New Jersey, and a couple friends and I would sneak up to New York and just go hang out and go to bars and stuff because nobody would card us in New York, and I remember… I remember it so well… I was essentially passed out in the backseat! And I remember like “Head Like a Hole” was playing and I just remember kind of waking up in the backseat and being like: “What is this song, who is this?!”. And they answered: “Nine Inch Nails”. I was like “Nine Inch Nails… ok”. And then I just kind of passed out, and the next day I went out and bought the cd and… that was my jam!
Thank you very much!
Yeah, of course! Thank you so much, be safe and be well!
