«I’m the head of the music department of a huge show where music is a character,» Jen Malone, who went from washing dishes to supervising music on TV, tells Bustle.
Music
“I’m the head of the music department of a huge show where music is a character,” she tells Bustle. Jen Malone wants you to know her job as a music supervisor requires more than the ability to make dope playlists. As part of the Emmy-nominated all-women music supervision team at Black & White, she’s not only responsible for curating film and TV soundtracks for Zola, Euphoria, Yellowjackets, and Atlanta, but also all the meticulous accompanying work. A music supervisor’s daily tasks include liaising with record labels to clear song rights, negotiating pay rates with songwriters, ensuring they’re aware of how their music will be used within a project, and coordinating everyone for onscreen performances — all of which can change last-minute based on a director’s vision. If Malone’s job were as easy, as some viewers perceive it to be, she probably wouldn’t have had to return to interning when she was 30 years old to learn the craft. More than two decades ago, Malone entered the music industry as a publicist for rock bands, but she soon burnt out and found solace in teaching Ashtanga yoga. The pivot led to a job as Lululemon’s marketing manager, which she held for two years until the Great Recession hit in the late 2000s. “Very unexpectedly, I got fired,” Malone tells Bustle. With a mortgage to pay and no creatively fulfilling work in sight, she soon took a position at a nearby cafe, where she thought she’d be making coffee and forging friendships with customers. But once she was placed at the dish-washing station, Malone wanted to quit. Around the same time, she went to see 2008’s Iron Man in theaters, felt blown away by the film’s use of AC/DC’s “Back In Black,” spotted music supervisor Dave Jordan’s name in the credits, and a light bulb went off in her head. “I knew nothing about what a music supervisor did,” she admits. “I was just like, ‘That seems fun.’”
Holding little-to-no knowledge about the position, she then “very serendipitously” met Jordan and subsequently worked as an intern for his company, Format Entertainment, when she was 30. Three days into another internship for ViacomCBS, Malone was hired as a music supervisor on several MTV and VH1 reality shows, including Are You The One?. “People don’t necessarily realize where I came from,” she says, recalling her humbling experience as an adult intern. “We had to introduce ourselves and say what our major was, [and I was] like, ‘I am not in school anymore.’”
Fast forward to today, and along with the rest of the Black & White team, they’re currently working on the music for Paramount+’s The Offer, Netflix’s Umbrella Academy and Wednesday, AMC’s Kevin Can F… Himself, Peacock’s Queer as Folk reboot, and John Wick: Chapter 4, among other high-profile projects. Below, read our Q&A with Malone about the ins and outs of music supervision, working alongside creator Sam Levinson on HBO’s Euphoria, and the controversy surrounding its high school characters’ party playlists. Before getting into scripted TV, you worked as a music supervisor on MTV and VH1 reality shows. What’s different about working in that realm compared to projects like Euphoria and Umbrella Academy? Reality TV is a grind. There is so much music in a reality television show that’s not necessarily the cool, sexy [music featured in] Euphoria, Yellowjackets, The Offer. On all of my reality shows, we didn’t have a composer, so we’re working with the editors to actually compose the score, because there’s always music running underneath. We also have a very, very, very, very limited budget — if a music budget at all — for artists’ needle drops.
