Sharing playlists is a love language for music supervisor Tiffany Anders (Pen15, Firefly Lane, Everything Sucks!). Same goes for BEEF showrunner Lee Sung Jin (aka “Sonny”), who had a lengthy compilation of tracks on hand when crafting the musical tone for his black dramedy. “I started one, too, where I had Built to Spill and My Bloody Valentine and other more indie ’90s rock stuff on there,” Anders tells Tudum. “It was really fun being able to send our music — just as music fans — back and forth to each other.”

Prepare to travel back in time to the ’90s (and ’00s, and even a tiny bit into the ’10s) with songs on the BEEF soundtrack:

Episode 101

O-Town “Liquid Dreams” (2001)
Hoobastank “The Reason” (2004)

Episode 102

Collective Soul “Shine” (1993)
P-Lo “Same Squad” (2018)
Tori Amos “Cornflake Girl” (1994)

Episode 103

Steven Yeun and cast “O Come to the Altar” (originally by Elevation Worship, 2015)
Incubus “Drive” (2000)

Episode 104

Sugar Ray “Fly” (1997)
Limp Bizkit “Nookie” (1999)
Morphine “Cure for Pain” (1993)
The Offspring “Self Esteem” (1994)

Episode 105

Shearwater “Natural One” (2013) 
System of a Down “Lonely Day” (2006)

Episode 106

Steven Yeun and cast “Raise a Hallelujah” (originally by Bethel Music, 2019)
Paula Cole “I Don’t Want to Wait” (1997)
Christina Aguilera “Genie in a Bottle” (1999)
Bush “Machinehead” (1996)

Episode 107

Steven Yeun and cast “Amazing Grace” (lyrics by John Newton, circa 1779)
Keane “Somewhere Only We Know” (2004)

Episode 108

Grant Lee Buffalo “Mockingbirds” (1994)

Episode 109

Tad “Jinx” (1990)
Björk “All Is Full of Love” (1999)

Episode 110 

The Smashing Pumpkins “Mayonaise” (1993)

Anders grew up in the ’90s and thrived on seeing bands of that era play live. When she received the pitch for BEEF — which hinges on a road rage beef between two lonely souls from different social stratospheres, contractor Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) and entrepreneur Amy Lau (Ali Wong) — Anders originally thought the series was supposed to be set in that decade.

But when she read the script, she realized it was set in present day and the songs were meant to provide a nostalgic comfort to these adrift characters. “Sonny had this idea in his head that he wanted it to be ’90s music,” she says. “The angsty rage to that era of music definitely suited the story and added to the tone of what was happening within these characters’ worlds. There was a real sense of apathy and loneliness, a very self-aware and confessional quality to the lyrics.”

But the show’s soundtrack isn’t restricted to the ’90s — there are ’00s anthems in there too (like Hoobastank’s “The Reason”), and even a gem or two from the ’10s that reflect that punk ache. 

“The Hoobastank song definitely led us down a different path, because [it] was released in 2004, and Sonny really wanted to keep early-to-mid ’90s as his target,” Anders says. “But when we saw the cut of the first episode, we all thought it fit lyrically and musically and there was a little bit of humor in it.” Reflecting the track’s lyrics, Amy and Danny have become each other’s reason to live after being untethered for so long. “That was not lost on any of us.”

🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

So what was the song at the end of Episode 1 in the original script?
It’s the song that they ended up using for the trailer, “Today” by The Smashing Pumpkins.

Were there any songs in the script that stayed through to the final cut?
I think Sonny had the Björk song “All Is Full of Love” in the outline before he’d even written the scripts. Lyrically, it really spoke to what was happening in Episode 9 and the musical pacing of it was also different from the rest of our grunge-sounding stuff. It has a softer feeling to it and at this point in the series, things start getting a little softer.

Were there any songs you fought to keep in the show?
The Shearwater song [“Natural One”] during Amy and Paul’s (Young Mazino) sex scene in Episode 5 — stuff like that where it wasn’t a big end credits song but worked really well. The Paula Cole song [”I Don’t Want to Wait”] was a big one, too, and it was just used on the car radio. I’m not going to divulge how we got it a little cheaper than it would’ve been, but it was an expense. With Sonny, everything’s so intentional, so we both fought to keep it because it’s got a [sense of] humor to it and is something that everybody will recognize [from Dawson’s Creek]. 

Were there any songs left on the cutting room floor?
There was a song that wasn’t released in the ’90s called “I Wanna Destroy You” by the Soft Boys. I still feel like it would be good somewhere within the series if there was ever a Season 2. I still think of BEEF when I listen to that song.

Andrew Cooper/Netflix

Is “Drive” by Incubus a metaphor for Danny’s arc of desperately wanting to be “the one behind the wheel” as the lyrics state? 
Yes, definitely. Sonny always had that in the script with Danny singing it, which for a music supervisor makes you think, “Oh, no. Don’t do that,” because then it costs more. All my general rules as a music supervisor went out the window on this show. But creatively it added up really well.

What was Kelly Clarkson’s team’s reaction to your request to use “Since U Been Gone” for the rice cookers?
That was another one where my music supervisor alarm went off, where I thought, “We can’t do this,” but we did. It took a lot of explaining that “it’s only being used for this amount of time and it’s on a rice cooker.” 

Why was Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” right for when Amy and Danny hit their rock bottom in Episode 7?
Sonny had that in the script, but he wasn’t sure it was working. We tried a few different things for that scene. I sent him some Oasis. It was a lot of emotion to capture in that moment, but they ended up making the song work with the edit. It was one Sonny really wanted to keep so it ended up sticking.

The Smashing Pumpkins’ (purposely misspelled) “Mayonaise” closes out the series. Is the song meant to solidify that Danny and Amy are soulmates?
I think Sonny was already shooting before we got that script. We didn’t know how it was going to end. Before he even gave me the script, he told me he wanted “Mayonaise” or this other, instrumental song. He wanted me to clear it before filming because he wanted to shoot the scene while the song was playing. It’s rare I get requests like that, but he was really adamant that he wanted the camera to follow the song. That was a huge thing for us. It’s kind of genius and amazing, and just goes to show how much Sonny really relies on music and his deep love of music as a tool for creating his stories.

Go Behind the Music of ‘BEEF’ with Composer Bobby Krlic

BEEF is now streaming on Netflix.