After the police killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations throughout the summer, Greene noticed more interest from music supervisors in political, soulful “voice of a generation”-type artists like Michael Kiwanuka, whose smoldering “Solid Ground” landed in a promo for HBO’sin May. “That was a beautiful use and done during the shutdown,” says Greene. “There was a creative shift that mimicked what we were going through.
“There is so much TV out there — over 530 scripted shows aired in 2019 alone, and that does not even include unscripted shows like game shows or talk shows or reality television. It’s a giant playground. There’s room for every type of music.”When the pandemic kicked in, Leavitt was fearful synchs would trail off for the first time after years of growth. It didn’t happen that way.
, placing 10 tracks, including The Alan Parsons Project’s ’90s Chicago Bulls theme, “Sirius”; Pearl Jam’s “Present Tense”; and A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?” “Because there were so many eyeballs at home watching,” she says, “we saw phenomenal spikes in consumption on all of those tracks.”“I have not noticed a difference, but in the first couple of months of the pandemic, producers were much more mindful of the type of music they used. In commercials, you saw many more somber ballads.