Tag: music

Uncovering The Spoilers Buried In The Music Of American Crime Story: Versace

Showrunner Ryan Murphy decided to start The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story with the titular designer’s death. For the first eight minutes of the show, there is minimal talking. We hear only the greetings as Versace (Edgar Ramírez) encounters various characters at the start of his day and the screams of Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), who was in the midst of a killing spree targeting gay men. What overwhelms our senses are the sounds of “Adagio in G Minor,” a haunting piece of baroque, Italian composition that we’ve all heard on screen many times, from Flashdance to Casanova to Manchester by the Sea. Though effective, it is not a particularly original choice. But, another layer is added to the story ACS: Versace is telling us if you explore the murky history of this piece of music.

“There were a couple of others we were trying, all in the same classical, Italian landscape,” the show’s music supervisor, Amanda Krieg Thomas, told Refinery29 on a recent phone call. Murphy, who directed the first episode, chose to set the sequence to a single piece of music and had the show’s composer, Mac Quayle, record a new version of this song to picture, so the arrangement matches up perfectly with the action.

There is a duality to watching a man who will lie, steal, and kill to serve his own ends execute another man in a moment scored by someone who perpetrated the most significant scam in classical music history. A musicologist named Remo Giazotto claims to have discovered the adagio, circa 1949. Giazotto was writing a book on the 18th-century Venetian master Tomaso Albinoni and said he had found this fragment of music in his archives, consisting of six bars of a melody. Giazotto took the liberty of finishing the composition, and the “Adagio in G Minor” was born. Except that Giazotto’s story wasn’t true. There is no proof to support that Albinoni wrote that fragment of music. Giazotto retracted his story later in life and took sole credit for the piece.

When it comes to pop music, of which the show has an abundance, powerhouse female vocalists from the late ‘80s and early ’90s are the stars in ACS: Versace. “It’s different from The People Versus O.J. Simpson in every way, but that show was a snapshot of the period, and that’s what we did for it musically as well. This season, the vision from Murphy was more focused on Cunanan and the type of music he would have grown up with; songs that would have been around him and in the places he went to that he’d be listening to,” Krieg Thomas says. The universe of ACS: Versace is aurally made up of women: club and radio jams by Lisa Stansfield, La Bouche, Indeep, Soul II Soul, and Jocelyn Enriquez all make appearances. And, of course, Laura Branigan whose cover (with its rewritten English lyrics) of “Gloria” became a hit in 1982. Her take is revived in episode 2, when Cunanan blasts it while he sings along in a stolen truck, taken from a man he killed.

“Murphy is such a fan of music, and for many of the moments, he knew what he wanted. ‘Gloria’ was one of those; he’s a big Laura Branigan fan,” Krieg Thomas said, which is probably not something anyone has said in decades. Her assertion bears itself out, though; the show uses another Branigan track, a No. 1 hit that has been all but forgotten in modern times, “You Take My Self Control,” in a future episode. “It works really well on many levels — it’s so incongruous with what just happened, he’s murdered people, he’s driving, and we hear this happy, upbeat song,” Krieg Thomas continued. She noted that the lyrics speak to what is happening: “Gloria, you’re always on the run now / Running after somebody, you gotta get him somehow” and “Gloria, don’t you think you’re fallin’? / If everybody wants you, why isn’t anybody callin’?”

A checking of the boxes (fits the show’s aesthetic, lyrically speaks to the scene) is noticeable at numerous moments in the first two episodes alone. “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life” plays when Cunanan meets Versace in a club in San Francisco, letting us know something is afoot. “Be My Lover” plays while Cunanan fruitlessly searches for Versace in a South Beach club in a fit of desperation. It’s a sickening foreshadowing when Phil Collins & Phillip Bailey’s “Easy Lover” plays as Cunanan ties up and dominates a john. Under the Miami Vice aesthetic of this ’80s hit lies a cautionary tale about a lover who will leave and deceive, giving you nothing but regrets. As for talk that it might be an homage to American Psycho, Krieg Thomas said, “although it’s pulled from the same easy listening palette, it wasn’t a reference point.”

In episodes 3, 4, and 5, the soundtrack pivots to speak to us about the other men Cunanan killed: Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock), and David Madson (Cody Fern). With Lee, it’s a resetting of the aesthetic by using songs coded for older gay men; where Doris Day and Astrud Gilberto play on the hi-fi. With Trail and Madson, the work is largely done by the show’s score, which sets a mood of horror to match the change in cinematography to the darker, harsher tones of Minnesota sunlight and Madson’s industrial loft. In episode 4, the foreshadowing is heavy when Madson and Cunanan are in a bar listening to Aimee Mann sing the saddest version imaginable of “Drive,” a morose uber-hit for the Cars in the ’80s. Madson’s tears along with the lyrics, “Who’s gonna pay attention / To your dreams? / Who’s gonna plug their ears / When you scream?” let us know that there was no escape. Not to the outside world where gay men were vilified, and not with Cunanan on a Bonnie and Clyde-esque murder spree.

The show uses music to tell us about Versace, as well. His South Beach soundscape is not so different from Cunanan’s, full of club music and dance hits but with flourishes of Italian classical dropped in to remind us where he comes from. In episode 2, there was a moment where the real Versace spoke. In another theme for this show, that of cover songs, they lifted a track that Versace used in his final fashion show for the scene with Donatella (Penélope Cruz), dropping the Lightning Seeds cover of “You Showed Me” in after their big fight over models and how to build a fashion brand. Reports have the siblings fighting quite a lot at the time, with Donatella trying to find her place in the house of Versace after her brother’s return upon his recovery from an illness. The use of this song in his real life may have simply been reaching for what was in the air at the time — it was the height of Britpop, and in his other shows he had used adjacent tracks like “Wonderwall” by Oasis. Or, it might have been a carefully constructed message to his sister. That we even ask the question, however, is entirely thanks to its presence in the American Crime Story universe.

Uncovering The Spoilers Buried In The Music Of American Crime Story: Versace

The Assassination of Gianni Versace, a playlist by Malinda Kao on Spotify

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Spotify playlist | updated to episode 4

Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ, “Albinoni’s Adagio” • Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life  • All Around the World • Capriccio, Op.85 – Letzte Szene: “Kein andres, das mir im Herzen so loht” • Bellini: I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Act 1: “Oh! quante volte” (Giulietta) • Gloria • Easy Lover • Back to Life • You Showed Me • Giacomelli: Merope: “Sposa, son disprezzata” (Merope) • A Little Bit of Ecstasy • Be My Lover • This Is the Right Time • A Certain Sadness • It’s Magic • St. Thomas • Pump Up The Jam • Drive

The Assassination of Gianni Versace, a playlist by Malinda Kao on Spotify

How ‘American Crime Story: Versace’ Nails Its Soundtrack

What is it about Laura Branigan’s 1982 hit “Gloria” that seems to inspire crime in pop culture these days? It’s what Nancy Kerrigan whacker Shane Stant gets down to in I, Tonya before doing said whacking. Then, in the second episode of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace, serial killer Andrew Cunanan (played by Darren Criss) listens to on the radio as he drives to Miami to commit the titular crime, switching off a news report identifying him as the suspect in another killing and smiling as he hears the disco beat and Branigan’s clear voice.

“I think there is something so liberating about that song,” Versace music supervisor Amanda Krieg Thomas tells GQ. “It just has this energy of letting go and leaving it all behind you, just this energy of devil may care.” The “Gloria” moment exemplifies the unsettling spark of the music in the latest installment of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story franchise. Paired with Mac Quayle’s ominous score, the occasional bursts of anthemic pop root the show in the the period and community it orbits while also rounding out its character study.

“The bigger picture with music that Ryan really wanted to explore is that we’re in Andrew’s mind,” Thomas says. Four episodes in it’s now clear that’s in keeping with the philosophy of the show at large, which functions as a portrait of Andrew and the homophobic society that shaped him and his misdeeds. Versace and his sister Donatella are entirely secondary characters, sometimes entirely absent from the narrative.

Easily the most intriguing cues find Andrew interacting with the music, like when he belts “Gloria” or dances to the Philip Bailey and Phil Collins team-up “Easy Lover” in a Speedo as a man remains trapped on a bed with his face duct-taped. In Wednesday’s episode, Andrew screams Technotronic’s throbbing dance incantation “Pump Up the Jam,” which implores its listener to “get your booty on the floor tonight,” to his nervous hostage and eventual victim David Madson. Writing for Pitchfork, Judy Berman argues that the show “is using music to frame its subject as an explicitly gay variation on the American Psycho archetype.” Laura Branigan is his Huey Lewis. Thomas sees aspiration in the choices. “I don’t mean to be saying that these songs inspire murder, these artists inspire darkness” she says. “It’s more just about what was surrounding him and as he was growing up and wanting this luxurious life and wanting so much more for himself.”

Thomas is a veteran of the Murphy-verse and is even doing double duty on his Fox procedural 9-1-1. As she describes it, the musical ideas often start with Murphy and executive producer Alexis Martin Woodall. The prolific creator, she says, is a fan of artists Branigan and “This Is The Right Time” singer Lisa Stansfield so they were part of the initial conversations. He was also an early advocate for Indeep’s “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life,” which soundtracks Cunanan’s fateful meeting with Gianni Versace in the pilot.

Unlike its predecessor The People vs. O.J. Simpson, Versace spans a broader time frame, yielding more material. Thomas hunted through Billboard charts from the era and sought out playlists people had posted online to figure out what would have been echoing through gay clubs during the era. The goal was to find songs that are recognizable but not too obvious. “Finding that line between huge hits that people have over-heard and then just those songs that make people go: ‘Oh, right that song, what a great song,’” she says. “That was sort of in the pocket that we were going for researching.”

The series doesn’t stay entirely lodged in Andrew’s brain. This week’s hour turns its attention to David and the fear Andrew instills in him after bludgeoning their mutual friend Jeffrey Trail to death. David’s initial reaction is to call the police; Andrew convinces him he’ll be a suspect because he’s gay. Fleeing, they end up in a dive bar, where a singer played anonymously by Aimee Mann performs a sensitive cover of the Cars’ “Drive.” David attempts to escape, but realizes his efforts might be futile. “The cover of the Cars works so well because it speaks to David and his wondering, who’s going to be there for me and where else do I have in this movement?” Thomas says. And, as Mann strums, Andrew breaks down.

The producers had always intended the sequence to feature a spin on an ’80s pop song, and Murphy, as a fan of Mann’s, wanted her for the job. Settling on the Cars’ tune was a collaborative effort. “The priority was obviously we wanted something that fit the story and fit the moment but is something that Aimee felt that she could really nail on camera, the acting, singing and everything,” Thomas adds. “That was one of the ones that everybody agreed on.” It’s a mournful companion to “Pump Up The Jam” earlier in the episode, sadly in harmony with the circumstances instead of discordant. “Pump Up The Jam” echoes “Gloria” in its mix of mania and exuberance. When Andrew finds a tune to drive to he almost attacks it. It fuels his escape from his circumstances and himself.

Thomas is aware that Versace wasn’t alone in finding a home for Branigan’s famous interpretation of Umberto Tozzi’s Italian track, and it’s equally at home in I, Tonya’s sonic pastiche. Craig Gillespie, the director of that film, said in an email he chose it because of the “perfect oddness” that manifested when the dopey louts are entranced by it. That phrase applies to its use in Versace too, but there’s something else there. Listen closely and you’ll notice how it is sinister when Andrew, being pursued by law enforcement, sings, “If everybody wants you, why isn’t anybody calling?” The lyrics are surprisingly paranoid. Gloria, if you’ll recall, hears voices in her head. Then again, if you don’t think too hard, it’s just infectious. “It called for a song that someone would sing along to,” Thomas says. “Not every song fits that bill and ‘Gloria’ you just want to belt it out.”

How ‘American Crime Story: Versace’ Nails Its Soundtrack

This Musician’s ‘Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Cameo Is So Haunting

American Crime Story has been jumping timeframes and locations to tell the full story of The Assassination Of Gianni Versace (executive producer: Alexis Martin Woodall). So while Gianni Versace is nowhere to be found in the Feb. 7 episode, “House By The Lake,” Andrew Cunanan’s alleged first victims in his cross-country spree are. Spoilers follow. After murdering Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock), Darren Criss’ Cunanan goes on the run in Minnesota with architect David Madson (Cody Fern). As Madson considers fleeing out of a bar’s bathroom window, Cunanan takes in a performance by a singer with an acoustic guitar. If you thought the singer looked familiar, there’s a good reason for that. Because it’s Aimee Mann in American Crime Story doing this low-key and slightly surreal cameo.

The Assassination Of Gianni Versace (film editor: Shelly Westerman) primarily takes place in 1997 and in real life, Mann was already an established musicianat that time. Her career started off with the band ‘Til Tuesday in the ’80s and in the ’90s, she was releasing solo music. By the year 2000, Mann had already released three albums as a solo artist and was nominated for an Academy Award for her music in the film Magnolia. But in American Crime Story’s version of events in 1997, Mann is just a lone cover singer in a Minnesotan dive bar off the highway.

Although American Crime Story Season 2 started in Miami Beach, Florida, the setting of Minnesota is important to “House By The Lake.” It is desolate by the rural lake where Cunanan kills his former lover Madson at the end of the episode — far different than the vibrant city of Miami Beach where Versace lived. And Mann’s performance of The Cars’ “Drive” drives that point home.

Yet, the focus isn’t on the special guest star for the scene. Instead, the camera mostly stays on Darren Criss to show how Cunanan is emotionally impacted by the singer. Trail and Madson, respectively, are the “best friend” and “love of my life” that Cunanan told Ronnie about in Episode 2. (These descriptions also match how TIME reported on Cunanan’s relationship with the two men.) Unlike other alleged victims Versace, Lee Miglin, and William Reese, Madson and Trail were a significant part of Cunanan’s personal life. So is it any wonder that he gets emotional when he hears Mann sing, “You can’t go on/Thinking nothing’s wrong, ohh no/Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?”

While the lyrics are moving, there’s actually a far more fascinating connection between “Drive” and The Assassination Of Gianni Versace. Model Paulina Porizkova, who’d go on to marry The Cars’ lead singer, is featured in the 1984 music video for the song. According to New York Magazine, Porizkova was the face of Versace four years later in 1988. It’s a point of contention if Cunanan had even ever met Versace, but the model in the “Drive” music video truly did know the fashion designer.

As for if Mann had any sort of relationship with Versace, that doesn’t appear to be the case. And while Mann has never collaborated with Ryan Murphy before, she’s no stranger to TV and film. Her voice appears on a number of soundtracks, but she has also appeared in projects ranging from The Big Lebowski, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Portlandia. She even showed up on Comedy Central’s Corporate as the well-balanced Peg Peterson just two weeks before singing on American Crime Story.

It’s most likely that American Crime Story recruited Mann because she’s an acclaimed singer-songwriter. But the one connection she does have to “House By The Lake” is the setting. Although Mann isn’t from Minnesota, her sister, Gretchen Seichrist, is based in Minneapolis. The Star Tribune reported that Mann performed with her sister in the Minnesotan city in 2010. Yet, Mann’s unnamed bar singer in American Crime Story isn’t in Minneapolis, the city highlighted at the beginning of “House On The Lake.” Instead, she performs closer to where Madson’s body would be found.

As The New York Times reported, Madson was discovered at East Rush Lake in Chisago County on Saturday, May 3 — nearly a week after Trail was killed. The lake in Rush, Minnesota, is only approximately 60 miles away from Minneapolis, according to Google Maps. But its isolated location makes it feel likes it’s further away from civilization. And while Mann’s solo singer at a lonely bar highlights that isolation, her performance also simultaneously conveys a feeling of being trapped. Because even when he has the chance to escape, Madson is still ensnared by Cunanan.

Mann’s cameo in American Crime Story was less Stevie Nicks in American Horror Story and more bar singer in True Detective Season 2. Her identity doesn’t necessarily matter to the plot because what’s important are the emotions she brings up for Cunanan and the viewers. As the final moments of “House On The Lake” blur the line between fantasy and reality, Mann’s dream-like performance manages to have the same effect. And her beautifully painful rendition of “Drive” will haunt you long after the episode.

This Musician’s ‘Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Cameo Is So Haunting

American Crime Story: The Truth Behind that Surprising Musical Cameo

There has been a lot of talk during this season of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story about what is fact and what is fiction. The source material, Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors, was meticulously researched—but there are still gaps in the story of Andrew Cunanan, as well as areas in which the show’s creators took some artistic liberty (such as the fantastical onstage conversation between Cunanan and Gianni Versace in Episode 1).

But of all the tales American Crime Story has to tell this season, the six days Cunanan and David Madson spent on the road required the most artistic invention. With both men dead, neither Orth nor anyone else could uncover what, precisely, occurred during that harrowing trip from Madson’s Minneapolis loft to his final resting place. Wednesday’s episode, “House by the Lake,” leans into that challenge by delivering the most surreal installment of the series—punctuated, midway through, by the appearance of singer Aimee Mann. Film lovers may recognize her most immediately from her soundtrack work on 1999’s Magnolia, while music lovers know from her solo career and as lead singer of the 80s band ‘Til Tuesday. Here, though, Mann appears in a Minnesota dive bar, crooning out a classic 1984 hit from the Cars: “Drive.” In what is, writer Tom Rob Smith tells Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast, the most pivotal moment of the episode, Madson tries to escape out of a bathroom window as Cunanan listens, emotionally, to Mann croon. Producers Brad Simpson and Alexis Martin Woodall spoke with Vanity Fair about how Mann’s unsettling musical homage to David Lynch came about.

Vanity Fair: Where did the idea to include Aimee in this episode come from?

Brad Simpson: During the development, one of the things that [writer and executive producer] Tom [Rob Smith] and I talked about—because we had been watching some David Lynch stuff—is the use of music Lynch’s movies, and how well he uses pop music. Tom said, “I think I’m gonna try something like that for the show.” He’d come up with this idea that [Andrew and David] would stop at a roadside bar, and there would be somebody singing—a sort of woman who had a great voice. There was a backstory to her. Maybe she thought she could make it out of this area of this town, but life didn’t work out, and she’s got this sort of weathered, great voice and is stuck there.

We talked about who we could get to play this. Somebody who was first known in the 1980s, who had a strong voice and you could buy as somebody who would live in this landscape. When we went to Ryan [Murphy] for suggestions of who could it be, he instantly said, without a beat: “Aimee Mann. Send her the pages, tell her we’re gonna figure out the song, but it has to be her.”

Alexis Martin Woodall: Brad and I started brainstorming music … we knew we wanted it to be something that was very familiar, but that you hadn’t heard of in a while—so you could emotionally connect with it, but it felt fresh. I got really stuck on one that I was so excited about, [by] Phil Collins. [Aimee] called and said, “Look, I think this song is beautiful, but I don’t think that I’m gonna do justice to this song.” So she’d come back with “Drive,” and it was really funny, because Ryan has loved that song, Brad loves that song—

Simpson: It was a mix tape staple for me.

Woodall: So she recorded a demo for us and sent it our way, and I think right then Brad and I got really excited. Because a demo from Aimee Mann is a little piece of musical genius.

Simpson: I was the guy—I was the ‘Til Tuesday fan in high school.

Woodall: If you’d seen his haircut, you’d really know he was a ‘Til Tuesday fan. Brad and I went out with her producer Paul Bryan—who is a genius, and I don’t use that word lightly—to his studio on a Saturday morning. We all talked about what the goal was, which was that we play it under. It’s not a star turn. We don’t turn the light on and say: “Ladies and gentleman, Miss Aimee Mann!” We just let the actual atmosphere take over, and then you get that there’s someone really legit on stage. Within two hours, we had something that you and I were just kind of flawlessly excited about, right? It was fast.

Simpson: In that scene, David is reconciling himself to the fact that he’s trapped with Andrew, and Andrew has a moment where he thinks he has lost [David]… . The song itself, once you hear the lyrics—hopefully not in an on-the-nose way— the lyrics to “Drive” can really have that double meaning.

Yeah—the lyrics “you can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong” seem pretty appropriate here. I wanted to ask for your take on what Darren Criss is giving in that scene as he listens to the song. We see Andrew overwhelmed by emotion—what emotion do you think that is?

Simpson: When Tom was writing it, I think he wanted to have two things going on. It’s a turning point in the episode. For David, he’s looking out the window of the bathroom and realizing that he’s trapped with Andrew. Maybe he could climb through the window and maybe he couldn’t, but he returns to Andrew. One of the things that’s happening for Andrew in that scene—and it’s one of the few times so far that we’ve seen any real emotion—the way Dan Minahan directed [Darren] to play it, and the way that Tom had written it, was the idea of: you’re watching the singer, David’s gone to the bathroom, and you’re feeling this sense of loss. You think he may have escaped. But either way, there’s an undercurrent of dread that you may have lost him no matter what. Darren wanted to get psyched up and do it in one take—you know, the slow push in that ends with him crying. And we gave him the space that he needed, and just did the long, slow push into the tear, and then he follows up with such joy.

This episode, which happens to be my favorite of the season, has these great surreal qualities, invoking shows like Twin Peaks or The Leftovers. I think the presence of someone as famous as Aimee Mann—even though she’s playing a character—in a random Minnesota dive bar really delivers a disorienting shock.

Simpson: And that is the David Lynch. When we were developing [the season], we talked about different episodes in terms of movies… . There’s a later episode which has nods to American Gigolo. David Lynch had made Wild at Heart, he made The Straight Story, he’s made movies about people moving across the country, he’s made movies about people who exist in the margins… . We talked about the way Lynch used Julee Cruise for the songs in Twin Peaks, the way that he used Roy Orbison in Blue Velvet, and the idea was to reconfigure a pop song much in the same way Lynch does… . We love Aimee Mann, but I think obviously there’s gonna be a whole group of people [unfamiliar with her] for whom it’s just, “Oh my God, that’s somebody with a beautiful voice.”

Woodall: Yeah. Totally anonymous.

You’re right. Not everyone is going to expect frogs to come falling out of the sky when Aimee Mann starts singing. Between this moment and “Pump up the Jam,” this is a great episode for music.

Woodall: I’ve always said that Andrew Cunanan’s favorite songs on shuffle is what we’re doing in the series. He would’ve been 15 in 1984, and there was a really cool darkness in that time period in the New Wave… . What would he have been listening to? What was popular when he fell in love with David? What was popular when he met Versace?

American Crime Story: The Truth Behind that Surprising Musical Cameo

The Assassination of Gianni Versace, a playlist by Malinda Kao on Spotify

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Spotify playlist | updated to episode 3

Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ, “Albinoni’s Adagio” • Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life  • All Around the World • Capriccio, Op.85 – Letzte Szene: “Kein andres, das mir im Herzen so loht” • Bellini: I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Act 1: “Oh! quante volte” (Giulietta) • Gloria • Easy Lover • Back to Life • You Showed Me • Giacomelli: Merope: “Sposa, son disprezzata” (Merope) • A Little Bit of Ecstasy • Be My Lover • This Is the Right Time • A Certain Sadness • It’s Magic • St. Thomas

The Assassination of Gianni Versace, a playlist by Malinda Kao on Spotify