Yellowjackets follows the surviving members of a high school girls’ soccer team stranded in the wilderness after their plane crashes while flying to compete for the national championship. It chronicles their immediate struggles to survive and the aftermath 25 years later. Music, like in any great TV show, plays a crucial role in telling the story. (Beware, there are spoilers below.)
Videos by American Songwriter
Set in 1996, Yellowjackets features many Gen X classics. With the conclusion of season three, here are some of the best—and most gripping—musical moments from the show so far.
“Cornflake Girl” by Tori Amos
Music supervisor Nora Felder chose “Cornflake Girl” to close the season 2 premiere. The show’s co-creator said Tori Amos’s song was perfect for its description of “fraught female friendships.” Amos uses cornflakes and raisins as metaphors for two very different types of girls. The cornflake girls are obedient and parochial, while the raisins remain open-minded and curious. Felder said she interpreted “Cornflake Girl” as a song about women betraying one another. Perfect for a show where high school friends wind up eating each other.
“Glycerine” by Bush
In season three, episode one, the adult versions of Taissa and Van dine and dash from an expensive restaurant. Bush’s post-grunge ballad plays while they kiss after skipping out on the bill. Gavin Rossdale wrote the song about a tumultuous relationship where a partner is combustible like a chemical. As the girls grow into adulthood, they cannot escape their secrets or the darkness of the “Wilderness.” Even when things are tender between them, you sense something sinister lurking.
“Street Spirit (Fade Out)” by Radiohead
Season two ends with perhaps Thom Yorke’s saddest song. Yorke sees nothing but death around him in a song driven by the anxiety of mortality. Adult Natalie dies from a fentanyl injection that’s both accidental and fated at the same time. It’s like the inescapable fade-to-black future in Radiohead’s final track on The Bends. Ben Okri’s novel The Famished Road inspired Yorke, and the book’s dance between the natural and supernatural worlds echoes the mysterious forces driving Yellowjackets’ doomed characters.
“Lightning Crashes” by Live
Shauna’s character continues a descent into utter nihilism after the death of her baby. She pummels Lottie in a brutal scene, which also cuts to the adult survivors dancing around a fire at (adult) Lottie’s cultish compound. Live’s defining song about life and death is perfect in its visceral use of “placenta” in the lyrics and the band’s unapologetic earnestness. As the song builds to its climax, things feel out of control, as do life and death and the spiraling realities of the show’s characters. But in season two, episode seven, Lottie’s beating also begins a kind of reconnection between the girls. It’s another rite of passage.
Photo by Jason Kempin/FilmMagic
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