The AvA Connection

🚨 Before we begin, I made some merch making fun of Industry Plants in Hollywood. My mom said “this looks great” so you know it must be good… Buy some so I can afford my $18 Sweetgreen salad this week <3.

🍯 The Weekly Buzz:

BLACKPINK’s ROSÉ is the first female K-pop artist to hit the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10

On that topic, the Billboard’s Staff came together to create a list of every single song that has ever debuted at the top of the Hot 100. From Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey, all the way to Morgan Wallen and Lady Gaga, you can read the whole list here.

Former Spotify Executive Atticus Shelly was recently appointed as the VP of Finance at TuneCore. Shelly was a large part of Spotify’s success before their listing on the NYSE, and TuneCore hopes to see similar success under his guidance. More on that here.

Jeremy Allen-White is playing Bruce Springsteen in an upcoming biopic, and a first look into the film was shared this week. From The Bear, to a Bruce biopic – read more here to see what he has been cooking up.

Oasis has cancelled 50,000 resell tix. Read why here.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to more than double the annual state tax relief available for film & TV (from $330 million to $750 million) after the state has lost more than $1.6 billion in productions to states like New York and Georgia who have lured away productions after the CA state tax cap had been reached. If that made absolutely no sense to you, click this link to read a breakdown from someone much smarter than me.

Chartmetric published a graph showing what languages made up the top 100 songs on YouTube’s Global Chart.

📞 The Call Log: JenMalone, Four-Time Emmy Nominated Music Supervisor

JenMalone is a Four-Time Emmy Nominated Music Supervisor based in Silver Lake. Recent credits include: Euphoria (HBO), Atlanta (FX), Wednesday (Netflix), John Wick Chapter 4 (Lionsgate), Mr and Mrs Smith (Amazon), Umbrella Academy (Netflix), ZOLA (A24), Yellowjackets Season 1 (Showtime), WeCrashed (Apple+), Will Trent (Fox), The Offer (Paramount+) and most recently, The Penguin starring Colin Farrell and Hysteria on Peacock. In 2018 she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Supervision for Atlanta, in 2020 and 2022 for Euphoria and most recently for Mr & Mrs Smith. She was awarded the Guild Of Music Supervisor Award for her work in Euphoria in 2020 and Zola in 2021. Our conversation is below.

AvA: How did you first get started as a Music Supervisor?

Malone: Music Supervision is my second career. I was a publicist for rock bands in Boston, and after doing that for about 10 years, I got really burnt out. I have a deep respect for all the publicists that I get to work with at the studios and the networks, but it's a grind... I had this period in Boston for a couple years where I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I've always known what I wanted to do, so to not know was really difficult for me. I really wasn't grounded and felt lost, and I ended up getting a job at a cafe washing dishes – which obviously was a very humbling experience. But then I saw Iron Man and I saw the music supervisor credits roll by, and I heard the AC/DC placement behind Robert Downey Jr., and I realized that was what I wanted to do.

So I packed up my car and my clothes, and I moved out to Los Angeles. I knew that I wanted to be a music supervisor, but didn’t know anything about the business of film and television or about copyright. So I knew I had to start at the bottom. I researched who all the music supervisors were, who their agents were, read every article I could find, did cold reach outs, and just really hustled. Serendipitously, I ended up meeting Dave Jordan who is the music supervisor for Marvel at this networking event. He was number one on my list, so I went up and introduced myself. 

Of course he didn’t know me, so I told him “Wait, Richard Kraft won't get back to me about getting my resume to you.”  He said, “You know who my agent is?” I replied
of course I do. I want to work for you.” And he said, “That's creepy, but awesome. What's your name?” And we totally hit it off. 

AvA: What happened next?

Malone: After i told him i wanted to intern for him, Dave was like “You have a career already. Why would you want to intern?” And I said “This is the Music Industry and you start at the bottom. No one is going to pay me to do something I know nothing about.” So he told me, “Okay, start on Monday.” 

I interned with Dave for the Summer, and after that was over, there wasn’t an opening to stay long term. I was on an email news group of women in the music industry, and somebody posted that MTV was looking for interns in their supervision department. I got an interview, and they said “just trust us, do whatever you need to do to get into the internship program.” Going to work in Dave's fun, funky office was one thing, but Viacom was another, and you needed school credit. I was obviously not in school but I went to LA Community College and enrolled for the class, but I never went and never paid, but i had this piece of paper that allowed me to do the internship.

AvA: What was that experience like for you? 

Malone: The first day at MTV all the interns had to sit around a boardroom table and go around and say what school we were going to, and what our major was. That was, again, an extremely humbling situation, but it’s just what I had to do. But I ended up interning for three days, and then I got a job as a music coordinator on a VH1 show. So the first five years of my career were in reality television, which is not the sexiest gig, but I learned so much. I'm so grateful for that opportunity because it was essentially a music supervision boot camp. I continued to hustle as an independent, and I reconnected with a friend from Boston, who was the post producer on the show Baskets. She asked me to help clear a song and ended up bringing me on as the Music Supervisor. This was my first proper network TV Supervision credit. After we wrapped Baskets. Kaitlin reached out “I'm doing another show. It's going to be really hard. I don't have a lot of money to pay you. It's going to be a lot of hip hop. It's with Donald Glover.” I said I'm in and that was Atlanta, and that show really changed the course of my career.

After that my phone started ringing a lot more, and i brought on Nicole Weisberg to co supervise a few shows, then I got a call to meet for Euphoria and my life really, really changed. I now run Black & White Music, and all-female music supervision company and have four incredible women that work with me; Whitney Pilzer, Sarah Chapeck, Haley Hanna and Nicole. 

AvA: Can you define the role of a Music Supervisor?

I think music supervision is one of the most misunderstood jobs in the industry. People think we sit around and make cool playlists every day, and that is absolutely not the case. We are in charge of all the music elements of a production outside of score.  We take care of any on camera elements, whether it is a band performing or a string quartet, a musical number, someone singing on camera and with TV we do it all with a VERY tight deadlines because everything has to be ready to go when we shoot. 

With Hysteria for example, the three main characters are in a band but the actors didn’t play instruments. So a month before we started production, we set up a band camp so the kids could learn how to play on camera. The band plays a few originals in addition to Iron Maiden “Number Of The Beast”  so we brought in an amazing songwriter Eric Vasquez to write the songs, then record vocals, then make sure the kids knew how to play. 

Sometimes for on-cameras, we work with locations to see how big the stage is or what they have available to us like a baby grand vs upright etc, we work with the director and showrunner to decide on the song, clear it, how many people will we see on camera with what instruments, then have our version created. I work with casting to find the right ‘look’ of the band or musicians, i work with props to make sure the instrument and gear is period specific if needed, we book studios, hire music contractors, find hand doubles, work with wardrobe sometimes, sound department, playback, directors - people have no idea how intense it is.  

Clearance is also a huge part of our job - maybe the most important because you can have the most perfect song for a scene, but if you can’t clear it or can’t afford it, you can’t use it. Sometimes we have to be detectives trying to find that one writer who has 1% of the song, negotiating fees, researching public domain and don’t even get me started on samples!

Then yes we have the creative side where we're pitching songs to the show runner to put in the scene and helping to create the overall tone and the Sonic palette of the show to help fulfill the director's vision. It's about them, it's not about us. But when you get to work on a project like Penguin or Hysteria, where I get to put in some of my favorite artists, that's a dream. 

AvA: You've taken on projects with extremely unique visual identities, you name some in Euphoria, Atlanta, Penguin, and Hysteria which just recently came out. Can you talk about the creative process that goes into each? 

Malone: It's all about the show runner's vision. Once we are on board a project, we have a kickoff meeting to learn what the sound of the show will be and start making playlists for editorial and producers. I’m so lucky that all the shows I work on, music is a character and is so important to the team. The ideas of what songs to put in the shows can come from anywhere and everywhere, but the collaboration with the showrunner and the editors is so important to this process of putting together the show and where the music's going to go and how it is going to help tell their story.

AvA: One song or artist you've always wanted to include in your work that you've never gotten the chance to?

Malone: Nine Inch Nails is probably my favorite band of all time and they are obviously a very specific sound and vibe so you have to find the perfect scene. With something like that I want to make it count, and really make it the perfect synch- something that is memorable and impactful and does both the scene and the song justice.  I haven't found that perfect moment just yet, hopefully soon. I have a playlist called someday syncs, and we're knocking those out one at a time.

AvA: (Leaving out your current role) If money were no object, what would you do for work? 

Malone: A private investigator. I have to do so much detective work when it comes to Clearances that I have developed a special set of skills..

AvA: What advice would you give to someone looking to break into the music supervisor role or the entertainment industry in general?

Malone: For music supervision, learn how to do your own clearance. That was the first piece of advice that Dave ever gave me, and it has been the most invaluable piece of advice I ever got. Always take the meeting, and just know that nothing is going to be handed to you, and you will have to hustle and do your homework. This is the entertainment industry, be willing to start at the bottom, be resourceful, always take the initiative and hustle to set yourself apart.

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