How ‘For All Mankind’ Makes Its Alt-History Music Choices

Over four seasons, Apple TV+’s For All Mankind has imagined an alternate history in which the Soviets got to space first, nuclear fission changed everything about the world’s energy industry, and NASA played an outsize role in American politics, economics, and pop culture. But when it comes to the needle drops that accompany the series’ narrative imaginings from 1969 to 2012, music supervisor Christine Greene Roe doesn’t get caught up in what-could-have-beens. The series casts a wide net over music in this reality, pulling from various genres, languages, and decades, and comprising a mixture of what Roe calls “sing-along songs” that everyone knows and deeper cuts from “era-defining” artists. That’s how you get the blissful audaciousness of a Russian rap song accompanying an American defector facing another day in a country that used to be her enemy, or DMX blasting in while two rivals decide to team up and hijack an asteroid — the expected and the unexpected keep viewers engaged, Roe says.

“There’s more of a focus on what works best, what emotion, what lyrics,” explains Roe, who served as the series’ music coordinator in season one and has been the music supervisor since. “It’s more about, This fits perfectly to picture and it’s of our era, than We really like this and it fits, but would they be as popular? I never feel like we’ve done everything. There’s always more to uncover, more to experience, more artists to find.”

Each season of For All Mankind is set during a specific decade — at least, before the season finale inevitably jumps the story forward in time — and Roe starts her process by homing in on what music was popular then, with a couple years of flex time on each side. “I try to find artists I’m not familiar with; I dig deeper into artists I do know. I try to find some of those rare gems,” Roe says. Her research results in an “initial era playlist” that is hours long — season three’s 1990s era included 139 songs — which she then uses as a guide to pair specific songs with specific scenes once she receives the scripts, reviews footage, and starts watching episodic edits. Sometimes a song choice will be scripted and Roe has to work on clearing it for use; sometimes she suggests four to ten songs to creators Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi; and sometimes a song she hadn’t thought about before ends up being the perfect choice. “We love each time period we’re in, and the exploration of music in those time periods is a joy,” Roe says. Here, Roe explains some of the series’ most fist-pumping, plaintive, and forward-looking song choices.

The first season of For All Mankind introduces us to the American astronauts who will be our primary protagonists, including Joel Kinnaman’s Ed Baldwin and Krys Marshall’s Danielle Pool. Various artists who will be used throughout the series make their first appearance here, including Frank Sinatra and the Rolling Stones, along with the Guess Who, David Bowie, and Petula Clark. Seventh episode “Hi Bob” includes a montage set to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Someday Never Comes” that captures Ed, Dani, and their colleagues in various moments of transition and tragedy. Dani is shunned by other astronauts for her perceived weakness after an accident gets her sent back to Earth, Ed is stuck alone manning the Jamestown base on the moon, and his son Shane (Teddy Blum) is grievously injured in a bicycle accident, changing the lives of Ed and his wife Karen (Shantel VanSanten) forever. 

This one I’m really proud of. There were a few things going on in discussions with the editor of the episode. We didn’t want to overly foreshadow what was going to happen with Shane, but once you’ve seen the episode, it does hint at it. It all sinks in as you’re seeing it unfold, and definitely if you give it a second viewing. The lyrics connect well to the story line. Musically, it hits these slower, emotional gut punches. The tempo really worked well that way, because we could be somber, then when Dani walks down the hallway, the song picks up pace. It’s hard to get the exact pacing for those moments when you’re not using score. Music editing is really important.

The editor as a placeholder, knowing it would change, had Nick Drake. I’m listening to what I feel is every single song from those years. When you discuss what you want out of the scene and you have a little bit of a guide, like Nick Drake, it helps focus. But that Creedence song is really what worked best. I loved that it wasn’t an overplayed Creedence song. John Fogerty’s vocals hit hard on that. It’s not Fogerty’s original intention for the meaning of the song, but what I think is great about some of these needle drops is we can bring our interpretation to it, and it works. If we put it against Shane and Dani, the meaning of the song as we’re watching changes to those specific interactions, and it works for each one. And then we end with Karen’s devastated face, and the song’s perfect for that.

The series’ second season moves into the 1980s, with of-the-time songs from Devo, the Ramones, Loverboy, and Huey Lewis & the News. But some of the most impactful songs of the season are from years before. In fifth episode “The Weight,” the Band’s same-named 1968 song plays in full as former couple Gordo (Michael Dorman) and Tracy (Sarah Jones) struggle on Earth and on the moon, respectively, to recapture their passion for space exploration. 

We’re with Tracy in her mundane existence, so we have to feel that repetitive mundanity. She’s almost getting sickened by the food she’s eating every day, and you’re feeling and watching Gordo try to get his act together. If you had a much shorter moment, you might not be in it as much. The episode was named “The Weight,” and that song was scripted. The discussion around that was, “This is what we have, and it works really well. Let’s spend a little time exploring songs closer to our time frame in this season and see what we find.”

When we discussed it before there was footage, I was listening to Talking Heads; I really like the song “Heaven.” I sent a few options, that and a New Order song; they hadn’t even shot it yet. But “The Weight” and that time period in music history, you can’t replicate that. You can’t find that exact sound and emotion exactly in the ’80s. We explored to just cover our bases, make sure we really considered everything, and Matt and Ben and Ron turned back to “The Weight.” They wanted to keep it, and it’s an undeniable song; it works perfectly. That’s another thing I like about the show: We’re focused on a particular time period, but if you notice each season, there are a couple of songs that aren’t from that exact era. That’s how we listen to music.

In that same episode, For All Mankind introduces the Elvis Presley song “Don’t Be Cruel,” a favorite of Karen’s that reminds her of her youth and raising the now-deceased Shane. The song takes on an illicit bent in seventh episode “Don’t Be Cruel,” when Shane’s grown-up best friend Danny Stevens (Casey W. Johnson), Gordo and Tracy’s son, plays Karen the Billy Swan cover of the song — and the two start a brief affair.

Those songs were scripted. But for me, the Elvis recording of it works for Karen. It means something to her, and then it’s taken into that time with a more modern recording that, in my opinion, totally changes the feeling of the song and works perfectly for Karen and Danny alone at the bar. When we see Karen dancing to the Elvis version and then we see the two of them dancing to Billy Swan, if you played the Elvis one in both scenes, it wouldn’t work as well. It just fits with the story that a younger man knows a more current recording and is sharing it with her. That’s true to life. I think the Billy Swan recording is beautiful. I love the slower pace. It makes the song so much more emotional. Then we hear Billy Swan again in season three, when Danny gets married. You’re with Karen and it’s just a shock — he’s really doing this.

I had to speak to three different publishers to clear the Elvis song. But because we weren’t doing anything risky or R-rated content, we weren’t making a joke of it, we weren’t using an Elvis impersonator, we were okay.

For All Mankind launches into its third season, during which the Americans, the Russians, the North Koreans, and private company Helios are all racing to make it to Mars first, with an emphasis on grunge, punk, hip-hop, and R&B. The Smashing Pumpkins, Elastica, Mariah Carey, Sunny Day Real Estate, Pale Saints, Screeching Weasel, and Stereolab are all heard in the era for which Roe feels the most nostalgia. The “awesome improvisational jazz” of Mary Lou Williams, associated with NASA engineer and administrator Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt), appears in two episodes, as do “Rhymes of an Hour” and “Mary of Silence,” two deep cuts from ’90s mainstay Mazzy Star. (“‘Fade Into You’ is an undeniable track, but it’s been in everything,” Roe says.) But some of the season’s biggest moments come from the decade’s most well-known songs, like Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” which soundtracks a montage of the American, Russian, and Helios spaceships taking off, and introduces a two-year time jump in space, in third episode “All In.” 

Soundgarden matters to everyone. That was the only choice, “Black Hole Sun.” It’s one of my all-time favorite songs. I’ve loved it since I was a wee little girl. I don’t think it’s necessarily a negative to have something we’ve heard before, because if you had a whole season of unknown songs, it wouldn’t be as impactful. “Black Hole Sun” is undeniable, and it puts us there. It’s musically vocally strong. It has an emotional base to it. And then they used it in the trailer — they changed the sound of it a bit, which made it cool, too. We’re living in that time, and it’s perfect. It’s one of those classic, all-time, never-goes-out-of-style, kick-ass songs.

In following episode “Happy Valley,” Ed and Karen’s daughter Kelly — stationed on NASA’s Sojourner-1 ship — is spinning songs on a pirate-radio station in space. Her diegetic choices reflect the breadth of ’90s music: Toadies’ “Possum Kingdom” plays as we travel along the outside of the three competing spaceships, and leads into A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?” 

Matt and Ben are open musically. They don’t box themselves in, so it’s fun to get to include different sounds and different genres of the decade. Toadies’ “Possum Kingdom” is another highly nostalgic song for me, and it was on my first playlist. I tried it in at least one other spot I thought that it might work this season, and then this is where it landed. It’s a song of the time that someone like Kelly would play on her pirate radio; it works well when we’re seeing the Soviet brutalist ship. When you’re visiting a few different moments, you need a song to tie it all together.

A Tribe Called Quest was in the script. We explored other options. I listened to the Pharcyde, I listened to Digable Planets, I listened to “The Creator” by CL Smooth and Pete Rock. We explored other things, even though we started with A Tribe Called Quest. Everyone knows “Can I Kick It?”; it’s a sing-along song. Watching that moment, you’re going across all those characters. It has to be something that we all love; it wasn’t a moment for a deep cut. It was a moment for this big iconic song that we all know.

In the recently completed fourth season, For All Mankind is firmly on Mars, where the Americans, Russians, North Koreans, and Helios employees live in sometimes uneasy harmony on the Happy Valley base. The aughts time period makes for various indie and alt-rock moments from the Strokes, Gorillaz, Modest Mouse, Hot Snakes, and Cat Power. Meanwhile, on Earth, Margo starts working for the Soviet space program, and her defection is eventually made public. To reflect her (forcibly) shifted alliances, premiere episode “Glasnost” sets Margo getting ready for her day — a recurring series sequence — to the Russian rap song “Питер – я твой!” (“Peter, I’m Yours”) by Bad Balance. 

Matt and Ben and the editors really spent a lot of time on that moment. We see Margo getting ready every season; it is a fun moment to listen for and to pick something. They really wanted to try a couple different angles and directions, and ultimately they decided that for where she is in that moment in the story, it was surprising to have a song kick in and then you hear Russian vocals. It worked better than English-speaking vocals.

Margo’s getting-ready songs are an evolution of jazz to hip-hop. I wasn’t responsible for the Squirrel Nut Zippers song in season one, but it did start this journey with that sound. Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” in season two is very ’80s. We ride across the bridge of Herbie Hancock and then we’re into Eric B. and Rakim’s “Don’t Sweat the Technique” in season three, and then we’re into Bad Balance. When you’re exploring for a scene, you dig up so much, then you hold on to it. One of those songs was Queen Latifah’s “Ladies First.” I didn’t get to find a spot for it in the end, but I listened to that song so many times throughout season three, and I thought that would be a fun song to put over Margo or another female character.

In that same hip-hip vein, the season’s most deliriously shocking needle drop comes in the final moments of episode seven, “Crossing the Line.” Helios’ Dev and Ed, who previously had been on opposite sides of a workers strike, glare at each other, until Dev smoothes the divide with a request: “Do you want to help me steal an asteroid?” As Ed’s face transforms from disgust to delight, the bombastic horns of DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It to Ya” smash into the scene and play over the end credits. 

Sometimes I’m just open in exploration, floating in space, looking for a song. This time, Matt and Ben said they wanted hip-hop, they wanted energy, they wanted a musically powerful song, they wanted strength. It’s a strong scene and a subversive discussion about what those two characters are going to get up to. You don’t expect Dev to say that to Ed, and then you don’t necessarily expect DMX to come on. Both story and music hit you in an excited way. What song is gonna support that from the time period?

I had “X Gon’ Give It to You” on the first playlist. They responded to it, but we did keep exploring for a while. One of my playlists was more lyric-focused. One of my playlists was more about how you feel when a song kicks in. We were really exploring different approaches to that moment, that look on Ed’s face. Matt and Ben kept going back to DMX. It was worth trying a few more songs to picture. But then when your brain keeps going back to, “Let’s watch DMX again,” you know.

Each season of For All Mankind ends with a time jump and a musical choice that signals the turning of pop culture toward a new sound or a new phase. Season one had Tears for Fears’ New Wave classic “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” season two Nirvana’s grunge anthem “Come As You Are,” season three Radiohead’s melancholy and musing “Everything in Its Right Place,” and season four M83’s futuristically synth-y “Midnight City.” The ending song is where the series plants its flag on what will come next, but the process for each choice was different. 

Season one, they had Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” in their head, so that’s what happened. Season two, it had always been a goal of mine to clear Nirvana. Nirvana is not easy to clear. “Come As You Are” was scripted, so as soon as I saw that, I thought, I have my work cut out for me clearance-wise. I felt like I accomplished a personal goal by clearing it.

Season three was a totally different situation. That conversation for the end of season three went on for months and months — a very long time. It wasn’t until really the end that we landed on Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place,” but I couldn’t be happier that that’s where we landed. Radiohead don’t repeat themselves. Every album is different. It’s sort of surprising to not use one of their ’90s hits earlier on in the season, but when you hear “Everything in Its Right Place,” you are transported to the early 2000s. You are traveling from the ’90s that you just watched to the 2000s.

Season four, Matt and Ben really wanted an era-defining song. “Midnight City” by M83 takes us to that time and that place. Musically to picture, the pacing of it, the instrumentation — it all works. Matt and Ben take the ending of the season very seriously, and they want that song that we’re not all necessarily going to expect, but then once we hear it, it launches us to the next time period. Each season we’re launching from where we’ve been to where we’re going to go. We don’t know the story of where we’re going to go, but musically, we’re starting to go there.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.