Thomas Golubić makes a lot of mixtapes. But instead of making them for roadtrips, friends or significant others, he makes them for Rick Grimes, Walter White, Jesse Pinkman and the funeral home of Six Feet Under.
“Creating mixtapes is a small part of the music supervision process for a series,” said Golubić, a music supervisor with credits on both Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. ”In essence, it’s a brainstorming exercise. … In the case of Breaking Bad, we frequently [went] to those early mixtapes to see if there are good ideas that we thought of early on that feel particularly prescient at the season’s close.”
Golubić’s picks have ended up accompanying some of the most climatic and/or intense TV moments for several critically acclaimed shows. Remember Sharon Van Etten’s eerie warning “everything changes” from The Walking Dead earlier this season, after a controversial decision by the character Rick? That was Golubić’s call. So was the track that played during one of the greatest series finales of all time: Sia’s tear-jerking “Breathe Me,” which ebbed and flowed in the background of the final Six Feet Under as the ultimate fates of its characters played out in an epic montage.
A long-time fan of Tom Waits, Golubić also tried to get the gravel-voiced singer’s “Big Black Mariah” on Six Feet Under for a scene where two characters dined in the afterlife, but ended up having to cut it for budgetary reasons. “I’ve waited for years for an opportunity to put Tom Waits in one of my projects,” said Golubić. So if you noticed that the character Beth on The Walking Dead just happened to sing not one but two Waits songs over the last two seasons — “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” and “Hold On” — now you know why.
Despite what fan theorists might think, however, there’s no literal message behind the words Beth is singing; the music simply seemed like a good fit. “It would be out-of-character of The Walking Dead to use a Greek chorus-style approach to the music,” said Golubić. ”Unlike in Breaking Bad where a song like The Limeliters’ ‘Take My True Love By The Hand‘ can play as a Greek chorus of sorts as Walter White rolls a barrel through the desert.”
The Season 4 finale of Breaking Bad almost featured another surprising musical addition courtesy of Golubić: Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks.” Before the track’s release, Golubić had sent an advance to showrunner Vince Gilligan, who thought it might make a great track for the final episode. Unfortunately, the American public loved it as much as Gilligan, and by the time the season was close to wrapping up the song had spent so many weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 it no longer felt fresh.
“At that point, we felt that it would be distracting to close the season with it, and moved onto other ideas,” Golubić said. Instead, “Gilligan then selected the Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi song “Black (feat. Norah Jones)” based on one of the early mixtapes we had sent him that season.”
Golubić says he can’t take credit for the final song of the series, however, the Badfinger track “Baby Blue.” “That was a song Vince Gilligan had thought of when he was writing the final episode. Once the footage had come in of that beautiful crane shot that ends the series, it became clear that ‘Baby Blue’ was the right way to wrap up the story of Walter White.”
