An entire generation grew up watching Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl) and Adam Brody (The O.C., Gilmore Girls), two absolute icons of 2000s teen television. And as the stars of Nobody Wants This — the rom-com series that centers around the will they, won’t they relationship between a hot rabbi and a cool podcaster — they’ve become symbols of the next chapter in millennial maturity: the adult search for a real romantic partner. To match the mood, the music was selected and supervised by two generational superstars in their own right, Este Haim of the band Haim, and Zachary Dawes, the Lana Del Rey collaborator and former bassist of Mini Mansions. It’s an incredible soundtrack of songs that Joanne (Screen Actors Guild Award nominee Bell) and Noah (Critics Choice Award winner Brody) — and anyone else in their date-of-birth bracket — would know immediately. It includes nostalgic throwbacks from Chumbawamba and Boyz II Men, vintage classics from Bonnie Raitt and Dionne Warwick, modern anthems from Rihanna, Mac Miller, and Fleet Foxes, and younger next-gen hits from Dua Lipa and Olivia Rodrigo that the trendy(ish) Joanne and Noah would surely appreciate. Here’s a look at how four scenes from Nobody Wants This use music to make the magic.
Este Haim — the bassist for the Grammy Award-winning band Haim — is one of the music supervisors for the first season of Nobody Wants This, and there’s no one who is better suited to a show about dating in East LA than she is. The Haim sisters, born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, specialize in wistful alt-pop “adulting” anthems for uncertain relationship statuses, and the messy push and pull of modern dating. 2019’s “Summer Girl” is the first thing we hear as Nobody Wants This begins in Episode 1. It’s a pensive ode to Los Angeles that’s as light and bright and easy-breezy as the city that the band — and Noah and Joanne — call home.
Under the blue-neon glow of a movie theater marquee, Noah and Joanne finally have their first kiss set to the twinkling, pixelated synths of 2016’s “See Her Out” by Francis and the Lights, the pop artist who has influenced icons ranging from Bon Iver to Drake. This glittering mid-2010s electronica gives the entire moment a kind of ethereal aura, making this now-iconic kiss even more metaphysically special.
There is no more perfect backing track for romantic indecision than Rihanna’s bereft ballad “Love on the Brain,” from her landmark (and, judging by how long it’s taken her to record a follow-up, possibly last) album, 2016’s Anti. After Joanne obsesses over an unanswered text — who among us hasn’t done the same? — from Noah, Episode 3 finds the two coming together at the end to realize that both of them are, unbeknownst to each other, locked in an anxious mutual fixation. In other words, they both have serious love on the brain.
Anyone who actually went to a Bar or Bat Mitzvah in the ’90s or 2000s will know this 1994 Boyz II Men ballad like the back of their hand. It was the slow dance anthem for post-synagogue parties — not to mention proms, winter formals, weddings, and quinceañeras — and, as Joanne and Noah take their first trip around the dance floor at Noah’s niece’s fete set to this classic jam, it’s hard not to feel your own nostalgic yearning for simpler days. For tonight is just your night, indeed.
Listen to the full Nobody Wants This playlist below on Spotify.
