Netflix dating reality surprises with its music budget
When the eighth season of the popular dating reality show Love Is Blind premiered on Netflix in February, many music lovers were taken by surprise.
Known for its anonymous and campy jingles, the show now features licensed music for the first time — and not just any music, but big pop and R&B love songs that don’t require viewers to constantly reach for their Shazam app.
The very first episode opens with REO Speedwagon’s Can’t Fight This Feeling playing over the opening montage. The hit parade continues in the following episodes: when one couple makes their relationship official, Billie Eilish’s two-billion-stream song Birds of a Feather plays in the background. When another couple exchanges declarations of love, Justin Bieber’s Holy swells in. And as the couples head off on a retreat to Honduras, Ariana Grande’s Into You sets the mood for some poolside kissing.
Love Is Blind has flirted with mainstream music before. For example, the third season finale featured a strangely ethereal version of Coldplay’s Biutyful. However, the eighth season clearly had its music budget increased, even featuring the show’s first-ever live music performance.
“It’s a show about love, and the music is a big part of the show. That’s why we wanted to celebrate our show’s fifth anniversary with some amazing love songs,” the show’s creator Chris Coelen explained to Entertainment Weekly in February. “With the right song in the right place, I think it adds a whole other level to the experience of enjoying the show”
This shift is noteworthy, as TV shows don’t often allocate significant sums to licensed music.
In its earlier seasons, Love Is Blind had a modest budget: jingles were pulled from music libraries or commissioned from anonymous small-scale composers whose tracks matched the cast’s emotions so closely that some even suspected them to be AI-generated.
Using well-known pop music in a TV show isn’t cheap, of course. According to Chris Coelen, though, it’s worth every penny.
The latest season’s music choices have already faced criticism for being predictable and safe — which aligns with complaints that this season has been the dullest in the show’s history.
Nevertheless, the plan is to keep licensing hit songs for future seasons.
“here are so many songs that we’d love to use, but we just haven’t found the right place for it,” says Coelen. “So that’s, again, another reason why I’m super excited to continue to use great music by incredible artists into the future.”
