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Alien: Earth has a bit of a rock and roll spirit to it. In usual Noah Hawley fashion, the series goes by the beat of its own drum, even when it’s another chapter of a franchise. It’s packed with action, horror, and thematics, all tied up in a bow at the end by classic rock – courtesy of music supervisor Maggie Phillips.
The Emmy nominee and Hawley worked together before on Fargo and Legion. Phillips is also the music supervisor for the upcoming (and delightful) Queens of the Dead. For every episode of Alien: Earth, she leaves fans on a high with thunderous needle drops.
Jane’s Addiction, Metallica, Tool, and Queens of the Stone Age – these are a few of the bands she secured songs from to close out episodes of Alien: Earth. They add a brand new flavor for the franchise, which never used rock music before. Recently, Phillips spoke with Daily Dead about bringing a new sound to the Alien franchise.
What conversations did you and Noah have about contrasting classic rock with futuristic, science-fiction?
Maggie Phillips: I think there’s the throwback seventies. The first one was in ’79. I do think it’s a way of nodding to the classic sort of throwback production design and the way they even did Alien. The VFX, production design, and costume design are kind of old-school.
We didn’t have any sort of reference material for songs. Some people have an issue with it, some love it; it’s polarizing. I know some people hate the fact that there are songs in it, but those are the purists. Look, it’s totally different — it’s a TV series. It’s not another movie; it’s a TV series. We just tried a bunch of stuff, and that’s what worked.
You kick things off with Black Sabbath.
Maggie Phillips: I remember watching the first cut and calling [composer] Jeff [Russo] afterward and being like, “What did you think of the Sabbath?” And he’s like, “Chills.” There was a smile on [editor] Regis’s [Kimble’s] face, my face, Jeff’s face, and Noah’s face. It felt so gratifying — a way to punctuate, but also propel us into the next episode.
And that’s the thing about TV that you don’t get with a movie. You have to put a dot-dot-dot. You have to punctuate and finish an episode, but then you have to keep the momentum going for the next one. Sabbath did it for us.
It’s funny to hear that the music is polarizing among “purist fans,” given the franchise is literally about evolving.
Maggie Phillips: It needs to evolve. I only know [the reaction] because people are telling me. Jeff, bless his heart, he puts himself out there, reads all the articles and all the comments. I do not, because if I were to read all the negative commentary, I would not be able to do my job next season. Assuming there is a season two, I’d be in my head too much.
Also, I’m used to that in my career in music. Everyone has strong opinions about music. It is what it is. Some people are going to love it. I just find it interesting that people are actively hating it, at least. I’ll give you my one example. It’s probably not important for your interview.
It might be.
Maggie Phillips: I have a small Instagram. I like to stay behind the scenes, but people have found my Instagram account. It was two or three [people], it wasn’t that many, but it’s two or three more than I’ve ever had in my 20 years of doing this, to post how much they hated the music. I mean, you work so hard on something; you’re doing your best. You’re also executing someone else’s vision. I’m not sitting there going, “This is how I am going to get the Alien fans.”
[Laughs] I hope in season two that’s your creative process.
Maggie Phillips: Twirl my mustache — my figurative mustache.
[Laughs] Well, I hope they read this and feel bad. Of all the Black Sabbath catalog, how’d you all land on “Mob Rules”?
Maggie Phillips: It was the lyrics. The lyrics really worked. We actually use two Sabbath songs. There’s the instrumentation, “E5150,” that leads to “Mob Rules.”
It was foreshadowing all the different corporations. In all of Noah’s stuff, there’s a nod to what’s going on in the world around us. The lyrics are “When you listen to fools, the mob rules.”
When you started seeing visuals from the show, did you think Tool just felt right?
Maggie Phillips: Tool did not come from me, but I love it. Jane’s Addiction, Smashing Pumpkins, Queens, Sabbath, and Metallica — there are so many songs and bands that I listened to growing up and still do. But Tool was not one of them. It’s interesting — Tool is the one that a lot of people really responded to. A lot of people texted me about that.
You used Jane’s Addiction’s “Ocean Size” in Legion too, right?
Maggie Phillips: Yes, we did.
Besides being a great song off a perfect rock album, what makes you gravitate toward “Ocean Size”?
Maggie Phillips: It’s a perfect rock album. I put that on the playlist for Legion. Nothing’s Shocking was one of my favorite CDs in high school. I discovered it a couple of years after it had come out. I was in high school in ’88, but that album was on repeat for me.
I remember putting on “Ocean Size” and “Up the Beach” for [the] Legion, and we used them. We had it on our playlist for Alien, too. I didn’t even ask Noah. Is it an Easter egg, or do we just love that song so much that we feel comfortable using it twice? Again, it’s the instrumentation — there’s the build and then the intense release. You just can’t get that with a lot of music.
For you, why’d that song fit Alien: Earth’s story?
Maggie Phillips: I think the reason that song and that album resonated so much for me as a teenager is the same reason it works so well for the show. At the end of these episodes, there’s all these big, intense feelings that Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and the Lost Boys are dealing with — growing up quickly in an instant. Teenagers grow up very quickly. Somehow, music is that cathartic release that we need to handle all these things that are going on in our bodies that we don’t know how to explain.
That episode is the one where Nibs (Lily Newman) is dealing with all her trauma and PTSD. It’s one of the first episodes where we see a lot of the Lost Boys — seeing what that trauma means. At first it’s like, oh cool, we’re kids that were dying and we’re put in these human bodies, and now we have superpowers. But then, slowly over the season, they’re coming to terms with what that means. Are they alive? Are they dead? Are they human? Are they robots?
Can you please get “Summertime Rolls” into a movie or show one day?
Maggie Phillips: I would say that is my favorite song off the album. I love that song. I could listen to that song on repeat. I’ve tried to get it into a bunch of stuff. It’s never stuck.
Why’s that?
Maggie Phillips: As a music supervisor, what we do is provide options. We don’t ultimately get to pick them. For every song you hear in a TV show, I’ve provided between 10 and 100 options, depending on how many they want to try out.
“Summertime Rolls” would be a great ending or even a beginning song or montage. It’s probably more of a film piece than a TV song. TV’s become — well, 10 years ago, there used to be a little more cinematic feel. This [show] isn’t a good example, but I do feel like TV in general is contracting. If you’re going to hear “Summertime Rolls” in something, I’d expect it to be in a film.
Episode five is the most connected to the original film, so how’d Smashing Pumpkins’ “Cherub Rock” capture that experience?
Maggie Phillips: It’s the lyrics. That song actually is about an industry. They wrote it about the music industry and how corrupt the music industry is. There’s a little layer about the lyrics that color and flavor the story we just told. And then, it also works musically in the world of the music we’ve been giving you. That’s the perfect blend. Again, I still think it comes down to what was satisfying to all of us. How satisfying is it to hear “Cherub Rock” come in at the end of that episode?
What is the long and winding, day-to-day process of securing some of these songs?
Maggie Phillips: I could go on and on about this. It’s not like you just have a Rolodex and you’re calling someone, saying, “Okay, clear it.” Every song is different — even off of an album. Like in episode seven, with Queens [of the Stone Age], there was one band member that had a proportion of the publishing, and it took us three or four months to track this person down via a lawyer.
The point is, we don’t accept no for an answer. With the Clapton and the “Strange Brew” cover that we did for the main titles, that took a letter from Noah. It’s a lot of chasing, a lot of not giving up, a lot of politely nudging and bothering people — as I call it, polite stalking.
Kristen Higuera is on my team. It’s just the two of us. She does a lot of the legwork. She’s been with me for six years now, and the two of us are chasing stuff all the time to get things cleared.
Is there the thrill of the chase, securing some of these songs?
Maggie Phillips: For us, it’s competitive. We’re both pretty competitive, and we want to score the “yes.” It’s getting that completion, getting that check, because we don’t ever want to disappoint or not get what the showrunner or the director wants. It’s doing everything to get the completion.
We just had a denial on another TV show from a major artist. To have to call up your showrunner and tell them they’re not going to get this song that they want is heartbreaking. You go through so much work to find the right song, so then to have it not be able to use it is, so it’s a heartbreak every time.
How satisfying was finally getting “Songs for the Dead” for the bloody aftermath of episode seven?
Maggie Phillips: That was cool, right?
Especially because their music can sound violent.
Maggie Phillips: I thought it was perfect for the end of that. Typically with Noah we have more songs. The other TV shows we did together, Fargo and Legion, there were so many more songs in the episodes. As far as Noah Hawley shows go, it wasn’t as difficult as it was for everyone else [in production]. We did it for over four years.
Lastly, Pearl Jam’s “Animal” — that’s a very tongue-in-cheek choice for the finale. What feeling did you want that song to leave viewers with?
Maggie Phillips: Oh, fun. Pure fun, right? Even though you’ve been through some trauma, the fact they’re all together and you see the alien crawling on the cage — it is just pure fun. Everyone smiles and it fits.
