Not Just Background Music

Many prime time television fans over the past couple years will never forget how they felt when they watched Joey climb through Dawson’s window, Seth kiss Summer while dangling upside down from the rooftop in true Spiderman form, and Meredith’s reaction to McDreamy’s past. Some viewers may also remember the music complementing those scenes that consciously or unconsciously helped play on their emotions.

A fan of the CW’s "One Tree Hill" specifically recalls one such memorable moment. “I felt the scene where Peyton goes and releases Ellie’s ashes in The Meadow was perfectly collaborated with the song ‘Here Comes a Regular’ by Paul Westerberg. That is a powerful song with such a powerful message, to be played during such a powerful scene. It blew me away the first time I saw it,” said Laura Drew, a sophomore at Joliet Junior College.

"One Tree Hill" has been particularly successful in using popular (and soon-to-be-popular) songs that tug on the heartstrings of fans around the world. The woman responsible for choosing those songs (as well as the tracks on "Smallville," "Las Vegas," "Felicity" and "Alias") is music supervisor Lindsay Wolfington of Lone Wolf Music Supervision.

As popular music has taken an increasingly prominent role in primetime television shows in recent years, Lindsay and other music supervisors have become power players in the music and television industries. But even so, the general public still does not have a full sense of exactly what they do.
“The job entails having a thorough knowledge of music as well as being able to match that music to the emotions of characters. I can’t imagine that it would be an easy job,” said Hillary Poudrette, a junior at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

According to Wolfington, that’s only half the battle, however.

“It’s not only matching the song to a scene, it’s going to the labels and publishers and getting permission to use the song and keeping the episode at or under budget. It’s also knowing good unsigned artists who are easily clearable at an inexpensive price,” she said. “A typical day for me includes clearing songs for one episode, listening to cheaper alternatives to replace an expensive song in another episode, and reading a script and sending music for a third episode!”