The reason Netflix’s Lizzie Borden series has jarring modern music, according to the showrunner

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is set in the late 1800s, so tell me why the soundtrack boasts modern songs from Kate Bush, the Lambrini Girls, Wet Leg, and The Runaways? It makes precisely zero sense. 

I first noticed it in episode one, when Maggie got down on her hands and knees to scrub Lizzie Borden’s blood off her stepmother’s fainting couch – which is also completely made up, by the way. 

At this point, Cherry Bomb by The Runaways started to play. Though undoubtedly an iconic song, it was released in 1976, decades after Lizzie died. 

There’s a reason for the modern soundtrack in Lizzie Borden  

Credit: Netflix

When Lizzie Borden and Maggie are planning the murders of Abbey and Andrew Borden, C**tology 101 from the Lambrini Girls plays. Again, it’s only in the last 50 years that the swear word has come to mean something else. So why was it included? 

“You don’t want a period piece to feel stuffy and like it’s in some sort of diorama. You want to remind the viewer that these are real people,” Co-showrunner Ian Brennan told Tudum. 

But it goes deeper than that, he said, because Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story also grapples with more than one time frame. You’ve got Lizzie in the late 1800s, Aileen Wuornos in the 1990s, and Countess Elizabeth Báthory in the 1500s. 

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He continued to explain: “We both go back in time to Lizzie, then go further back to Elizabeth Báthory and then come back sooner to Aileen Wuornos. So we’re sort of jumping through time anyway and extending that to the present day with music, felt like the right move.”

I mean, they could have just kept the songs to their relevant time periods?

Here’s the full soundtrack in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story: 

• Cherry Bomb — The Runaways
• Hounds of Love — Kate Bush
• Mangetout — Wet Leg
• C**tology 101 — Lambrini Girls
• Today — Jefferson Airplane
• The End — The Doors
• Stumblin’ In — Suzi Quatro & Chris Norman
• I’m on Fire — Chromatics
• The Women of Ireland — The Chieftains
• Hong Kong Garden — Siouxsie and the Banshees
• Smalltown Boy — Bronski Beat
• The Last Time — Andrew Oldham Orchestra
• Carnival — Natalie Merchant
• Stardust — Hoagy Carmichael
• Opening — Philip Glass
• I Know — Fiona Apple 

Not one of the songs was released in the 1800s. The closest is Stardust by Hoagy Carmichael, which dropped in 1927. 

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.

Featured image credit: Netflix