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Though The Hills is synonymous with Lauren and Heidi, it's Joe Cuello and Jon Ernst who really make the show worth watching. Cuello, MTV's Vice President of Music Integration, and Ernst, the series' Music Supervisor, spend each week expertly pairing songs with footage in order to convey love, loss and cheerful vacancy. Here, they talk to Rolling Stone about the show's patron saint Natasha Bedingfield, breaking new bands on the program and whether we can expect a Heidi Montag tune to pop up in an episode anytime soon.
Tell us about your strategy when making your music
selections for the show.
Jon Ernst: Since we're not dealing with scripts here, we're dealing
with what people are actually saying, sometimes the emotion doesn't
get put forth perfectly enough so the viewer understands, so
whatever else needs to be said, we'll say that with a song.
Joe Cuello: The Hills is really a marquee opportunity to
showcase music. The format lends itself to great music moments. You
have the opportunity for the songs to play a little longer, for the
words to register and connect with the image in a unique way.
Historically MTV was shorthand for super-cutty [camera shots], but
if you were to say "that's very MTV" now, I would venture to say
that's The Hills and Laguna Beach, which is a
much more deliberate, spacious editing style. It's perfect. It's a
music supervisor's dream to have that kind of room to breathe.
It seems like all the music gets pretty good pickup from
the promotion that you do, but the breakout hit has to be the theme
song, Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten." How did that choice come
about?
JC: We all had a relationship with the characters because this was
a spin-off from Laguna Beach. We all had a perception of
who these characters were and what we hoped the show would become:
this aspirational journey of a person moving and starting life on
their own.
JE: Like a Mary Tyler Moore. When this song came out it barely hit
the radio when we heard it and we were like, "Wow, this is the
theme song."
JC: The song really reflected the feel of the show and we wanted to
help push the career of artists like Natasha to make sure that
everyone was really aware when they were watching the show who it
was sung by. We tried to dovetail it all together so we featured
her music video over the end credits. For us, that's a really
incredible promotional tool. We see a huge response from that in
terms of online and in sales. It's really gratifying years later to
see that it's so inextricably tied to our show.
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Besides that, what song or artist has the best conversion rate from appearing on the show to seeing an effect on sales?
JC: That's a little hard to quantify. The newest story would be "Pocket Full of Sunshine" with Natasha. Sales of Marie Digby's cover of "Umbrella" shot up 1,000 percent on iTunes the week the show aired. The Carolina Liar story is the most obvious because we were the starting point, as opposed to being in rotation on a radio station. It was unavailable and unheard of before the show and then sold 3,000 copies of the single ["I'm Not Over"] right after. It's affirmation for us that people are watching the show and discovering music.
Would you ever consider using Heidi Montag's own music
on The Hills?
JC: I think we are most concerned with characters as they are on
the show. We really want to experience Heidi as her character on
the show and not necessarily any other aspects of her life.
Although ? good for her.
JE: I don't think it's out there as something I can license right
now, but I certainly wouldn't hesitate if it was available for
that. The quality of her music certainly stands up. She's been
involved with some top-notch producers.
Can you tell me where, amid all these breaking artists,
the idea to use Frente's cover of "Bizarre Love
Triangle" came from?
JC: That was Jon. I thought that was genius because the song just
really worked and then many of us, who are not 14, had a
pre-existing relationship with that song that brought a whole
different weight to the scene.
JE: Especially for the ends of episodes, we're always battling to
find the perfect song that says everything. When that one fell into
place it was really cool.
Do you look specifically for female artists to tell
these stories?
JE: Sometimes. It really depends on what we're trying to say. When
you use a female voice, you automatically are transported into that
character's head, so a lot of times you want to tell a story
without pointing out whose point of view it's from. A male vocal
over a girl's thoughts can work wonders.
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Are your choices based more on lyrics or music?
JC: I know my desire for the company at large and for our shows at large is that the lyrics not completely describe the actions people are seeing, but that it just be evocative of the tone of that moment.
JE: It's a combination. You gotta have the right mood musically along with the perfect lyrics. Then you have television magic!
What are some of the standout music scenes for
you?
JC: A lot of our music on the show really has got some emotional
quality that is unifying. I think there are certain songs that
we've used in the show that remind me of certain moments and have
become very iconic in that way. A Fine Frenzy's "Almost Lover" and
Audrina are inextricably tied because of the scene where Justin
Bobby is obviously kind of cheating on her and they have this
falling out in the parking lot and that's the song that tells that
story.
Is there a directive that the music is meant to evoke a
certain emotion when we see Lauren or when we see
Heidi?
JC: No, I think it's pretty organic. It's about the scene. And
sometimes what you think is going to work just doesn't. It's either
too on the nose or cheesy or doesn't ring true. And there's some
songs that you think couldn't possibly work together and then once
you put it to the picture, you create this third thing. You marry
the image and sound together.
JE: The music in this series can be considered a character, as if
it were a narrator. I think that's a rare opportunity to use music
in that way, not just playing in the background as wallpaper, but
actually telling the story as if it were the narrator.
So if the music is a character, is it Team Lauren or
Team Heidi?
JE: That is a funny question. But I can't answer it.