I’m the Music Supervisor for All Those Netflix Reality Dating Shows

I dreamt of being a music icon, but instead, I’m sweating through my clothes inside a mobile edit bay somewhere in South America, soundtracking an argument between a software salesperson from Bakersfield who’s looking for “someone to settle down with” and a Dallas marketing coordinator “hoping to, like, do something different in terms of dating.”

I supervise the music for Netflix’s multiverse of reality dating shows.

You could say this job chose me—much like the balaclava-clad men who snatched me from that derelict warehouse masquerading as a tropipop songwriters meetup.

You know those songs you like? The ones those syndicated coastal radio guys play in between invasive studio interview segments with artists half their age? I make shitty imitations using an ancient Pro Tools installation, a guitar once owned by a deceased former contestant, and smartphone vocal recordings from our longtime production assistant, who’s an aspiring singer but nevertheless still a production assistant.

I write what I see, and what I see is madness.

A new contestant swaggers through the living quarters with questionable intentions, and I dump the BPM, fade in fuzzed-out 808s, and queue sinister strings. Intonations clearly recorded in a bathroom somewhere warble into the mix: “The right reasons don’t mean nothing to me.”

Things are getting tense at the bar. Naturally, I set the guitars to chug while floor toms and bass build to a crescendo. Someone throws a weirdly Byzantine goblet, and an anguished male voice bursts into the mix, screaming something indecipherable.

A sleazebag with a secret family confesses on the reunion episode. As the first tears descend his botoxed under eyes, I bring in major-key cowboy chords and plucked strings. He was in his midtwenties when he came on the show, and now he’s in the twilight of his midtwenties, more mature. Boos and expletives from the audience drown out a hopeful tonic.

Please understand that I do much more than curate vibes: I functionally prop up this entire company. The cost of the licensing rights for a single Sabrina Carpenter song would disrupt our budgetary equilibrium, which they tell me we achieve through a slow drip of celebrity disinformation docs, indistinguishable odd-couple rom-coms, and serial killer miniseries where softly lit leading men murder people but feel bad about it.

They need me here wearing my fingertips raw on these drum pads, and I need to finish the music for season seven—maybe then they’ll give me my passport back.