Why Do the Real Songs on Love Is Blind Sound So Wrong?
There I was, immersed in a melange of thick Minnesotan accents and conversations about Black Lives Matter when suddenly, I sensed a shift. It started with Billie Eilish. During a sweet scene of two cast members formalizing their relationship after several days in the Love Is Blind dating pods, producers swoop in to celebrate the occasion with a misty ballad, “Birds of a Feather.” OK, fine. Love Is Blind had flirted with mainstream music cues before—Season 3’s finale featured Coldplay’s oddly ethereal Music of the Spheres track “Biutyful.” But Season 8 felt instantly… different.
Over the next few episodes, the trend continued: Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” chorus crescendoed as a cast member tearfully left the pod experience unengaged (the implication I guess was that she was the wrecking ball?); Justin Bieber’s spiritual cries on “Holy” accompanied a scene of a couple exchanging “I love you’s” and, later, Ariana Grande’s pulsing “Into You” during a pool makeout session at the couples’ retreat in Honduras.
With each track, my suspicion grew. These were popular songs with familiar lyrics, playing alongside the show’s dreamy anonymous pop songs written by sync houses that telegraph cast members’ emotions for viewers. Then came the most jarring sync yet to open Episode 8.
As Bill Withers sings gently about the morning rays hurting his lovesick eyes on “Lovely Day,” Season 8’s golden couple, Daniel and Taylor, giggle and etch their initials in the sands right before a bird squawks and flies into Taylor’s face—a harbinger of doom for these lovebirds? A montage of all the couples ensues: wistful ocean gazes, paddle-boating, and deep-sea diving in Sandy Cheeks helmets. It felt surreal. Too bad all this licensing largesse went to one of the blandest seasons in Love Is Blind history.
Love Is Blind thrives on overwrought music cues, and its soaring, on-the-nose ballads are just another layer of the show’s orchestrated melodrama. But Season 8 marks an unexpected pivot into A-list music licensing for Netflix’s most-watched dating “experiment.” Each weekly episode drop since Valentine’s Day has served up an unsettling number of recognizable love songs (and, soon, the first-ever live musical performance for its March 9 reunion ep). Why now? Creator and showrunner Chris Coelen told Variety they wanted to “lean into celebrating great love songs” for its fifth anniversary. The fact that the series now has a budget to license Top 40 hits is notable, but its core library of hyper-generic songs remains part of the allure—the saccharine soundscapes that keep Love Is Blind delightfully absurd. While I appreciate a well-placed banger, I’ve come to crave this bizarre made-for-reality-TV stock music.
In the past, Coelen has said he wants the soundtrack to “speak to and support the feelings that the people in the show are experiencing.” Case in point: Season 1’s couple’s retreat opens with singer Tom Bromley’s plaintive cut “In Soft Focus” and the lyrics, “I don’t wanna wake up/I wanna spend our whole life in this new life,” to coincide with a scene of a couple (what else?) waking up in bed. In 2023, music supervisor Jon Ernst told the L.A. Times he opts for music cues that build from a quiet intro into a “massive emotional chorus.”
Apparently, so do I. I need that faux-Ed Sheeran, crescendo-heavy background music to enhance my emotional connection to the cast. Second my emotions! These cues work best when they induce frustration, second-hand embarrassment, or elation. Viewers laugh and sink into the feeling of whimsical, medium-to-high-stakes romance. Musicologists should study it.
In one sense, Season 8’s sweeping mainstream pop numbers feel appropriate for a season that seemed like it might yield a healthy amount of long-lasting marriages for Love Is Blind, thus fulfilling the show’s promise that two conventionally un-fugly people can fall madly in love from behind a wall. On the other hand, it feels like ordering lobster at Applebee’s—the treacliness doesn’t fit the vibes. It’s distracting. Worse, the song selection leans predictably safe, stripping the show of its signature so-bad-it’s-good charm.
What’s wrong with me? Am I a victim of the corporate romance-industrial complex? Maybe I’d appreciate this season’s loving soundtrack more if I felt more invested in the couples, a la Season 4’s Brett and Tiffany or Zack and Bliss. Of course, a TV show is allowed to evolve, but not this one, not in this way.
The next cue nearly split me in half. It’s Episode 8, and David has sufficiently grilled each pair at the couples retreat about whether they’ve had sex yet. After they clink golden wine goblets and bid farewell for the night, K-Ci & JoJo’s “All My Life” fades into the season’s only Black couple, Virginia and Devin, recapping the past few hours in their room. No, this doesn’t fit, I thought. Did I miss a cast member saying, “All my life, I prayed for you,” right before this? Confused and unsure how to process it, I paused and replayed the scene, soaking in what felt like a monumental moment for reality TV—a real, licensed love/engagement/wedding song.
The Love Is Blind music factory churns out vaguely uplifting tracks that perfectly suit its theatrics while generating revenue for independent artists. I fear AI will soon replace the last vestiges of handmade reality TV cheese and that this licensed music is just a stopgap between authentically terrible and algorithmically “perfect” music choices. There might be a compromise—if producers can program these mainstream pop tracks with the most on-the-nose lyrics for key scenes and keep those drops to an absolute minimum.
Episode 11 comes to mind. David has just broken up with his new fiancé, upset that she dared sleep with another man a week before entering the experiment. “Love is blind,” he notes, direct-to-camera. “But I don’t think marriage is.” Whatever that means. Cue the sterile twinkles of Selena Gomez’s “Lose You to Love Me” and the appropriate lines: “We’d always go into it blindly…” Yes. We do always do that… On any other show, I would hate this. Here, it felt right. Oddly comforting. It’s almost like he had to lose her to love her.
