How ‘The Shards’ Made Music the Star of the Show — SkimNews
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- Amanda Krieg Thomas served as music supervisor for Ryan Murphy's new FX series The Shards, co-created by Bret Easton Ellis and based on his 2023 autofictional novel set among Los Angeles high-schoolers in 1981.
- Thomas received a Spotify playlist of roughly 200 songs and artists referenced in Ellis's novel — including Duran Duran, Blondie, and REO Speedwagon — which became the foundation for the show's soundtrack.
- Must-have tracks written into the scripts included "Vienna" by Ultravox, "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart, "Funky Town," and "Icehouse" by Flowers (later Icehouse), the last of which Ellis's characters bond over in both book and show.
- The series' original score was composed by Morgan Kibby and David Klotz, with new tracks from Troye Sivan, while Thomas sourced lesser-known bands like Robin Lane and the Chartbusters, Gleaming Spires, and Trout Fishing in America to round out the sound.
- Thomas researched period-accurate music for scenes set at Hollywood's Hamburger Hamlet — a red-leather L.A. institution that closed in 2011 and where she had to crowdsource jukebox lore as an East Coast native — ultimately choosing songs like the Go-Go's "Our Lips Are Sealed" and Split Enz's "Nobody Takes Me Seriously."
- Thomas noted that licensing lesser-known artists carries a different emotional weight than scoring chart-toppers: "All these uses become so meaningful to them," she said, because the bands aren't featured as often.
Why it matters: For obscure '80s bands like Robin Lane and the Chartbusters, landing a slot on a Murphy show is a career milestone — Thomas says they're more excited to be featured than chart-toppers. The 200-song source playlist also exposes how music functions as scaffolding for Ellis's autofiction, not just decoration, since nearly every pivotal scene is anchored to a specific record.
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