Dozens of music industry professionals from around the world are in town to take part in the major M for Montreal showcase, which, until November 18, features several established artists — Milk & Bone, Marie Davidson, Philippe Brach, Choses Sauvages, Ouri — and to discover. However, one of the people most awaited by the industry is unknown to the general public: Nora Felder, music supervisor whose name appears in the credits of the series Stranger Things, broadcast on Netflix. Ahead of the conference she will give today, The duty spoke with her.
There will be a crowd at the Latin Quarter cinema on Wednesday afternoon to attend the discussion between Nora Felder and her colleague Heather Guibert, vice-president of the Guild of Music Supervisors. Felder, an experienced music supervisor who got her start in the film industry in the mid-1990s, is now a star in her field thanks to her noted musical selection for series Yellowjackets (on Showtime since 2021) and Stranger Thingswhose production of the fifth and final season has just resumed.
“You can never predict which project will be successful,” says Nora Felder, “but when Stranger Things exploded, I was inundated with offers to work on other productions. » The simultaneous strikes of screenwriters and actors (that of actors ended on November 9) suddenly lightened his schedule. “We were going to start shooting Stranger Things when everything stopped. The same goes for the sequels of What We Do in the Shadows [pour la chaîne FX] And Yellowjackets. My workload has drastically decreased for a few months, but I feel like I’ll have to work twice as hard next year to finish all these projects! »
Nora Felder willingly adjusts her schedule to participate in events like M for Montreal, knowing full well that she will once again be one of the speakers most sought after by publishers and record companies since her musical selections have the power to launch, or to resuscitate careers.
“In all honesty, this attention sometimes overwhelms me a little, but I love these conferences. Each time, I try to get into the mood of a conversation with the interviewer to make people in the industry feel like I’m speaking to them individually, because I otherwise don’t have the time to do it. I want to explain my work to them, especially since I constantly receive emails asking for even 15 minutes of my time to listen to them talk to me about their artists. It’s impossible to listen to all the music they send me! »
When it works, it works! Sometimes the song I need just pops into my head.
She says she trusts her instinct, as much as her great musical memory, to fulfill her mandates. “When it works, it works!” Sometimes the song I need just pops into my head. Often I go back to rummage through my huge collection of vinyls and CDs, or an idea comes to me when I hear music playing in a car passing by me. Or, in a more traditional way, I go through my emails, I listen to the albums that people send me. The important thing is to always keep your radar on. »
Scenario
Nora Felder hit two famous home runs by proposing to producers — “The music supervisor suggests songs, but it’s the director and production who have the last word,” she emphasizes — to use the song Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush as well as Master of Puppets of Metallica to accompany two of the most memorable scenes from the last season of Stranger Things.
Two beautiful cases which explain the work of Felder and his colleagues. The Bush case is particularly interesting: the song obviously corresponds to the era in which the series is set, but also came out of nowhere. We rewatch the scene and say to ourselves that the choice is famous. “The director describes the scene to me, evoking its atmosphere and the emotion we want to provoke,” explains Nora. Music has the power to suggest different emotions — a simple sound can change the tone of a scene. Here, the text of the song also had to have a link with the scene, and it is often from the text that I find the right song. »
She had this flash: we must Running Up That Hill. Then it remained to obtain the rights, which is no easy task with Kate Bush, a reclusive artist, rarely seen in the studio or on stage, and who did not even come last week for her induction into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Luckily, Nora Felder learned that Kate Bush was a fan of Stranger Things, “so that in writing him this long introductory letter, I didn’t have to put everything in context. All the same, I knew that I had to be precise, very detailed, in my description of the scene which required her song so that she understood very well how it would be used, and for which character.
Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield during the scene in Stranger Things, who delivered the song Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush at the top of the charts
After the broadcast of the episode in which Running Up That Hill was highlighted, its number of plays on Spotify jumped by 9900%. A month later, the song reached number one on the UK charts and number eight on the US Billboard charts. At the time of its release, in 1985, the song had not made better than a 30e position. Which says a lot about the power that music supervisors hold in this music industry that is constantly looking for new sources of income.
The other case is the use of Masters of Puppets during the epic final fight; as much as Kate Bush’s song seemed composed for her stage, that of Metallica could have been replaced by another metal canon of the time, from Ozzy Osbourne, or even from Slayer, Pantera or Iron Maiden, we suggest to Nora.
On the contrary, she protests: “Frankly, I think that the Metallica song had the right energy to allow our dear Eddie [Munson, personnage joué par Joseph Quinn] to fulfill his destiny. Above all, in terms of the text, Master of Puppets was the perfect song since it’s about facing one’s own demons”, figuratively in the original sense of the text written by James Hetfield, which spoke of the hold that drugs had on him. “This text corresponds to what Eddie was experiencing. »