‘Yellowjackets’: Best Musical Moments

The Live Through This highlight plays as the teens attend a party, and, in flash-forwards, the adult version of tough-as-nails Natalie (Juliette Lewis) gets out of rehab. “That album is, start to finish, fucking perfect,” says Lyle. “It felt like ‘Miss World’ was just so right for that scene and for the introduction of Natalie.”

The showrunner’s fandom runs deep: In September 1994, when she was in eighth grade, Lyle went to see a riotous, mosh-heavy Hole show on the Live Through This tour at the famed Stone Pony in Asbury Park. “I got kicked in the head five times,” she says. “But it was the best day of my life. I met Courtney Love afterwards and she signed my T-shirt for me.”

Although Yellowjackets mainly features rock, Lyle chose this 1990 pop hit for the moment teenage Misty (Samantha Hanratty) secretly destroys the crashed jet’s black box. The Wilson Phillips classic even makes a return in the third season, when an adult Misty (Christina Ricci) is drinking espresso martinis with her fellow citizen detective Walter (Elijah Wood), officially making it the socially awkward character’s theme song. “This song seems [to be about] desperately trying to fight against the avalanche of your own melancholy,” Nickerson notes. Adds Lyle: “It just felt so Misty. A Wilson Phillips girl through and through.” 

Inside the cabin, the team does a choreographed dance to this party staple. “That’s what you would do when you were bored with your friends and you’re too young to have a driver’s license and go out,” Lyle explains. “It feels like they’re regressing because they’re trapped there.” 

This track, from Belly’s 1993 debut Star, serves as the background to the team’s “doomcoming” party, when they get dressed up and accidentally trip on mushrooms (an honorable mention goes to Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose,” which plays directly after “Gepetto”). “There’s something so melancholy but celebratory about Belly songs,” Lyle says. “I think [they’re] one of those undersung bands from the Nineties.” Adds Nickerson: “Usually, before Ash and I start writing something, we’ll create a playlist for it. And I think Belly has been on every single playlist that we’ve ever assembled, just to get into the right headspace.”

“Alright,” adult Natalie tells Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) and Tai (Tawny Cypress), opening the front door to their high school reunion. “Let’s fucking do this.” They make a grand entrance, strutting to this Offspring track. “I remember when we first moved to L.A., it was on the radio all the time, and I was just like, ‘Oh, is there a resurgence going on?’” Nickerson recalls. “And people were like, ‘Nope. This is just evergreen here.’ Los Angeles’ Bon Jovi.” Lyle says they auditioned a lot of songs for this scene, but this track was the clear winner. “We were all pretty surprised,” she says with a laugh.

Though the first season hinted at cannibalism, it doesn’t happen — spoiler alert — until the start of Season Two, when the team eats the corpse of Jackie (Ella Purnell). For that, Lyle and Nickerson chose this chilling OK Computer cut. “‘Radiohead’ and ‘haunting’ are words that go hand in hand to me,” says Lyle. “Thom Yorke’s voice is such an instrument, and we knew in that moment we wanted a song that almost had an instrumental feel to it, because we didn’t want it to get in the way of what was happening. We wanted it to just underscore and enhance it. The dreaminess of it, the creepiness of it, it just worked beautifully.” Adds Nickerson: “I don’t think I could explain to you all the levels on which I am moved by that sequence.”

This cut from Amos’ second album, 1994’s Under the Pink, serves as the background to a spooky scene in which the team finds dead birds scattered around their snowy cabin in the wilderness. “I’m a huge Tori fan,” Lyle says. “I took piano lessons for far longer than I wanted to. I was like, ‘I will continue taking piano lessons, Mom and Dad, but only if I can only play Tori songs.’ The unabashed weirdness of Tori Amos, and the unabashed emotionality of what she does, feels very Yellowjackets. We felt like we had failed by not having any Tori in Season One, so we made up for it in Season Two.”

The art pop duo’s 1982 title track serves as a clever introduction to another duo: adult Misty and Walter, two citizen detectives who are freakishly perfect for each other. The camera shows shots of them side-by-side, each in their respective hotel rooms, as they inspect every inch of the premises in sync — putting remote controls into plastic bags, wiping down the hotel landlines, and so on. “It’s so delightfully weird,” Lyle says of the track. “The tone and the feel of the song matches the characters so perfectly that you’re just like, ‘Oh, thank god this song exists. This is exactly what we needed.’”

The first time we see the adult version of Van (Lauren Ambrose), she’s working in a video store as this 1993 hit plays. “It was one where the puzzle pieces just snapped together,” Nickerson says. “It gives you so much [of] a character that you already know, but is obviously very different in a way that you’re about to discover.” Lyle notes that the track is a karaoke staple within the couple’s group of friends. “It’s one of those great songs that happened in the Nineties and doesn’t happen as much now, where it almost doesn’t make sense that it became a huge radio hit. It’s such a weird song. But it’s a banger, and we have a lot of affection for it.” 

This Brit-pop juggernaut serves as a bridge between a pre-crash flashback (the Yellowjackets team in health class, watching a birth video) and 1996, where Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is in labor. “That episode in particular is very heavy, so we needed to find some places where… I mean, fun isn’t exactly the right word, but to bring a little bit of anarchic spirit,” Lyle says. “It played so well against the irony of the opening into her being in this situation.” Right away, Lyle says she knew it was a good fit for the scene. “It did not take a lot of auditions. We knew very quickly.”

This post-grunge gem plays while a young Lottie (Courtney Eaton) allows Shauna to brutally beat her up, while in the 2021 timeline, the survivors dance around a fire. “That song is unabashedly bombastic,” Lyle says. “It’s so painfully earnest, ‘[Her] placenta falls to the floor’ being a lyric. Ed [Kowalczyk] is just going for it, man! There’s something about how big and celebratory it gets. To have that be this moment where they are really reconnecting and getting back to the selves that they were and the friendship that they had just worked so well for us. There are very few songs in the history of recorded music that could work [with] a bunch of drunk women dancing and a girl beating the absolute shit out of another girl.”

Yellowjackets had already featured “Today” and “Drown,” but this Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness track was their best use of the Pumpkins, heard while the girls chase Natalie through the wilderness on a mission to kill her. While the creators are often “drawn to songs that have a certain earnestness to them,” Lyle says, “this song is just so pissed-off, so unapologetically punk rock.”

This beloved Bends-era track can be heard in the Season Two finale, when adult Natalie is killed by an injection of fentanyl. “It was a really rough, emotional scene to shoot,” Lyle says. For the two showrunners, using any Radiohead song “almost feels like a cheat” because of how well the band’s music encapsulates the show’s vibe. “It’s like emotional shorthand,” Lyle says. “That is just a song that immediately makes you feel a certain way, and it makes you feel exactly what we wanted people to be feeling there. There’s something deeply unsettling about it. We didn’t really audition. It was just the song.” Adds Nickerson: “If you’re going to try to create a moment that has finality but also is so open-ended, you’re going to end up using Radiohead, because they are the ones who know how to do that.”

After the team’s cabin burns down in the dead of winter to end the second season, Season Three opens with a serene scene of the Yellowjackets standing amongst makeshift huts in springtime, set to this folky classic. “The melody not only flows nicely, but the lyrics also nod to, ‘It’s a new day, we’ve survived, and we are savoring life,’” says Felder. 

Nickerson, who directed the episode, says that the track “makes you feel like you’re in the most beautiful eye of a terrible storm.” Nickerson and Lyle admitted the Teaser and the Firecat gem had been lingering in their minds well before Season Two. “Originally, we were going to set [the show] in the Seventies,” Lyle says. “And because we make giant playlists for everything, we had this huge Seventies playlist for the show. Three of the big songs on it were ‘Morning Has Broken,’ ‘Space Oddity,’ and ‘Make Your Own Music.’ We would drive to pitches, and we would play those songs in the car to psych ourselves up.”

Gavin Rossdale’s heart-wrenching ballad plays as the adult Taissa and Van kiss after dining and dashing. “The slow drive of it and the nostalgia, it’s all perfect,” says Nickerson. Initially, the showrunners weren’t sure if they could afford the Bush track, so they enlisted the show’s composers — Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker — to cover it. “Craig and Anna are the beating heart, musically, of this show,” Lyle says. “[But] the season goes on, you get a better sense of where you’re at monetarily. And it was like, ‘OK. We actually can afford it.’ So we used their cover later in the season, and it really comes full circle. We get to have our cake and eat it, too, on the ‘Glycerine’ front. It turns out I’m a Bush fan. Who knew?”

Critics were quick to point out that Lost also deployed this 1969 hit, which Lyle admits she’d completely forgotten. “It’s the truth,” she says. “We’re big Lost fans, but it’s been years since I’ve done a rewatch. And we honestly forgot. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. It’s the big Hatch scene. What the fuck is wrong with us that we forgot that?’ But it’s been on our playlist. It’s just a song we love. It’s so Seventies. It’s so touchy-feely.” It plays as Shauna walks in on her daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins) and Lottie (Simone Kessell) dancing in the kitchen. For a moment that would piss off Shauna, Lyle says, it was spot-on: “I guarantee Shauna is not a fan of that song.”

This track, from the band’s 2009 album Hombre Lobo, plays as adult Van and Tai grapple with Van’s cancer and decide to test the wilderness. “[They] see if there’s a signal that they’re supposed to get that, if they follow through with this, the wilderness is going to throw them a solid, for lack of a better word,” Felder says. “For me, ‘Fresh Blood’ accents their situation of wanting to break the monotony of a seemingly dire situation, in which perhaps it might take a drastic action to change what they’re going through.”

This Nineties classic plays as adult Van and Tai take a romantic stroll through New York City. “It’s just such a beautiful song, and [Dolores O’Riordan’s] voice is incredible,” Lyle says. “I feel like we rarely get to just have purely romantic moments, so we try to capitalize as best we can when we do.”

In one of the most gripping, gnarliest scenes of the season, this PJ Harvey staple plays as a young Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) is forced to cut Coach’s (Steven Krueger) Achilles tendon to prevent him from running away. “I just felt that the gut-wrenching [quality] and intensity of PJ’s vocal performance really matched up with the violent intensity of two of our characters,” Felder says. “PJ’s tonality is perfect for the show.” Adds Lyle: “I think that it’s in real close contention for my favorite needle drop of this season. It’s so fucking badass.”

Low was already featured back in Season Two — during the devastating scene in which the team doesn’t save Javi (Luciano Leroux) as he drowns in a frozen lake. But the “slowcore” duo’s “Be There” serves a heartbreaking scene here, in which young Natalie euthanizes Coach. “Natalie’s forced to make a decision between saving or sacrificing someone we all know is very near and dear to her heart,” Felder says. “This was a tricky scene, because it’s a longer scene. It needed to hit a lot. It needed to go through her thought process leading up to this moment, which was tough, but also, there was this balance that I needed to come up with. This right balance of not being too sweet, not being too dark. It kind of had to have everything — the perfect storm of emotions that she was going through.”

Lyle says the scene introduced Thatcher to Low. “Sophie loves music so much,” she says. “And she listens to a lot of the same stuff that I was listening to at her age, but she’s discovering a lot of it now.” Lyle adds that losing Krueger’s character was emotional for her. “We’ve been friends with Steven since our first episode of The Originals,” she says. “He’s a very good friend, and it was really upsetting to kill his character. We spent so much time in the room being like, ‘But what if we didn’t?’ I have a hard time watching that scene. It’s so lame to say that the show we made makes me cry, but that scene gets me. It really, really does.”

Felder discovered this largely unknown band from Madagascar while at a music festival in France last year. Their track plays while the team “honors” Coach while eating him in the wilderness — and are interrupted by the arrival of strangers. “[Nosy Be] is an island in Madagascar,” Felder explains. “Not only is it remarkable that you even have a female metal band coming out of Madagascar, but with all the hardships there, the song is actually about loving your island and where you came from. I think that represents what some of these characters are feeling. They’ve actually become emotionally attached to this island, to the wilderness. In their case, in a very unhealthy manner.”

Sugar Ray’s chill 1997 hit is the perfect background music to three strangers (a wilderness guide played by Joel McHale and scientists played by Nelson Franklin and Ashley Sutton) getting high in a tent. “We meet these humans, and they’re not part of the warped reality that the Yellowjackets are living in,” Felder says. “They’re not stranded, and they’re enjoying their evening, so to me, we needed a hit in this spot. Something that takes you out of the crazy element of the wilderness to be like, ‘Oh, yeah. There’s normal people who have a seemingly normal life back home, and in reality might be listening to this song while they’re chilling out and partying.’”

It’s hard to believe that it took the show three seasons to feature the dream-pop legends, but they finally get their moment in the scene in which adult Shauna arrives at Melissa’s (Hilary Swank), parked outside her home with a knife. “Jeff Israel is one of our editors,” Lyle says. “He’s been on the show since the very beginning. He’s a huge music nerd like the rest of us. And he was very excited when we picked it. So, shout out to Jeff. You got your Cocteau Twins.”

In the present, Jeff (Warren Kole) and Callie pack up the hotel room Shauna deserted them in, while in the past, the team prepares to leave the campsite, excited about what fast food they’ll eat after they finally return home. It’s somewhat of an Easter egg for fans, who will remember that Oasis was briefly mentioned in Season One, when the team eulogized Rachel, who died in the crash. “This is a song we had always hoped we’d be able to come back to later in the series — poor Rachel will never see Oasis at the Meadowlands or hear ‘Wonderwall’ again, as noted at her funeral,” Nickerson says. “Which makes it the perfect backdrop for the team as they prepare to finally go home!”

This Brit-pop track plays as Yellowjackets daydream about life after rescue, having visions of blueberry Slurpees, toilet paper, and real beds. “There’s just something so morbidly funny to us about hearing a sunny Supergrass bop while the girls fantasize about all the things they’ve missed the most about home — and bury the victim of an axe murder, naturally,” Lyle says. “Can’t go mad, ain’t got time!”

Lyle is a lifelong Sleater-Kinney fan, even making an appearance on MTV News as a teen during one of their early concerts. The title track to their 1997 album appears during a gruesome scene, in which Shauna forces Melissa to eat her own flesh. “Genevieve Butler, one of our editors, slipped this needle drop into the first cut of the episode as a fun surprise for me, and was delighted,” Lyle says. “I actually can’t believe it took us this long to use them in the show.”

This jaw-dropping scene — in which adult Melissa murders Van — marks the third Radiohead song in the series. “We actually tried really hard to not use it, because we were like, “We can’t just keep using Radiohead!’” Lyle says. “We tried so many things. And every single time, we were like, ‘It’s not as good as Radiohead. Radiohead is the song that wants to be in this scene.’ So, we pulled that move.”

Jeff has some hilarious musical moments over the course of the series, including a private listening session to Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” in his minivan. Lyle and Nickerson remain committed to the bit, as he smokes a joint with his daughter to this Stone Temple Pilots classic. “We’ve had fun over the last few seasons playing with Jeff’s quintessential Nineties dad rock playlist, which, frankly, up until the end of this season, has actually felt like his primary form of emotional catharsis,” Nickerson says. “Jeff definitely listens to ‘Creep’ while getting high and being sad. Definitely.”

For a scene as shattering as Tai burying Van, Felder selected Faithfull’s “The Mystery of Love,” a track from 2003’s Before the Poison that PJ Harvey wrote. “This is a really gut-wrenching, soul-stirring moment in which Tai has to do probably what I would think is the hardest thing she’s ever done and might ever do in her entire life,” Felder says. “‘Mystery of Love’ just enhanced it perfectly. This was a song that I had in my little arsenal that, I’m looking for the right moment, and it’ll speak to me. It’s like the wilderness. The picture will tell me what it needs, and it’ll come up, right? And that’s what happened.” 

The song was selected prior to Faithfull’s death in January. “It makes me even prouder that many will hear this song and hopefully become new fans of hers and embrace her music,” Felder says. “Thank you, Marianne, is all we can say. Her music is timeless to me. It really is.”

The final moment of the season is what fans have been eagerly waiting for since this New Jersey soccer team first crashed in the Canadian wilderness. Young Natalie escapes, repaired radio in hand, and takes it to the top of a mountain to call for rescue. The song that plays? Aerosmith’s Nineties anthem “Livin’ on the Edge,” which Lyle and Nickerson had been wanting to use since the pilot. “It’s one of the quintessential Nineties songs to me,” Lyle says. “How do I put this without sounding like an asshole? I think that song is really good, but I’m not sure the song is good, if that makes sense. I don’t want to piss off Aerosmith, but it’s a ridiculous song. The lyrics are a lot. It’s all over the place. ‘Chicken Little’ is a lyric that comes up many times. And when you see the episode, we just dive in. We wanted to go hard in that moment in the biggest way possible. They’re dialing that up to 11. And I love it.”