‘Wolf Like Me’ Season 2 Took Nirvana’s ‘Lithium’ South of the Border [Exclusive]
You could almost smell the chicken fajitas steaming off of the wild twist on Nirvana‘s “Lithium” in Peacock‘s horror-com Wolf Like Me Season 2.
Once again, creator Abe Forsythe and music supervisor Andrew Kotatko made musical magic with their own rendition of “Lithium” with a Mexican flavor.
“That involved me getting permission from Courtney Love. And not only to just use the original track. It’s being able to turn it into what it is in the show,” Forsythe told Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
In Wolf Like Me, Season 2, Mary (Isla Fisher) goes into labor and Gary’s (Josh Gadd) daughter Emma knows hearing “Lithium” would comfort her during an especially long and painful labor. The song reminded Mary of her dead husband (who she likely killed while transformed into a werewolf) so Emma found a version that would at least make Mary laugh.
“Lithium” is transformed from the angsty, raw song sung by Kurt Cobain to a peppy version covered by a mariachi band.
“My composer actually did that with a whole bunch of session musicians. We created the song ourselves. But it’s also coming from a very authentic place. It makes sense in the story. It’s still tied into Mary’s past. Her dead husband. And so it seemed like the right thing to do at the time, to actually give that character and give Mary some relief.”
Courtney Love was ‘amazing’ about sharing Nirvana’s ‘Lithium’
Music from INXS, Nirvana, and Crowded House are widely featured in the series. Forsythe said Kotatko was a genius when it came to appealing to musicians to get the rights to use the songs.
“I think with ‘Lithium’ there was a moment where I thought, ‘How is Courtney going to feel about this?'” Kotatko told Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
“Well, you know what? She was actually amazing about it,” he said about Love. “But we did send a demo. So you can’t just make assumptions about artists, especially with an artist that comes from a great body of work and an estate. In other words, they’re representing a heritage artist, in essence.”
Artists beyond Nirvana took more work to sign on for ‘Wolf Like Me’ Season 2
Gaining the rights to the INXS song, “Never Tear Us Apart” wasn’t as easy, he recalled. “And so this great responsibility with that, but also INXS, that took a lot of convincing,” he shared. “‘Never Tear Us Apart’ is a key song of theirs. It’s very close to them and. It took a long time to get there. I actually have to thank their manager because she really backed it. But, you know, you have to bring people together. It’s not like you’re dealing with one person. We were dealing with Michael Hutchinson’s estate, but also with all the band members. And so they all had to agree on usage.”
The George Harrison song, “Here Comes the Sun” was approached with care. “In the case of dealing with George’s song ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ we had to go to Dhani and Olivia Harrison. Abe wrote a very sincere and very heartfelt and very clear statement of intent,” he said. “And so I asked him to write a letter, and he’s done that before. And we did it again with the Harrison Estate. We also did the same for ‘Lithium.’ You can’t just use these songs in this particular way. And so extensively, particularly if you’re doing arrangements and you’re doing rerecording unless you kind of take the artist in hand. And so there was a lot of sort of planning and preparation. Those were integral.”
Wolf Like Me Seasons 1 and 2 are currently streaming on Peacock.
