Dissecting Industry season 4’s best music moments

This interview appeared in THE FACE’s weekly music newsletter. You can sign up here.

Let’s hear it for Industry​’s music supervisor, Ollie White. As well as working closely with electronic musician Nathan Micay on the show’s distinctive and queasily euphoric score, Ollie has synced the songs which enhance the emotional resonance of the plot – often lacing the characters’ back-stabbing, home-wrecking, line-scoffing antics with a sense of poignancy, or adding a layer of dark and ironic humour.

Music is so important to the emotional beats of Industry that creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay write parts of the script with particular songs in mind. ​“Konrad and Mickey are obsessed with music,” Ollie tells me. ​“We go to loads of gigs. I go to Glastonbury every year with them, and we have communal playlists of tracks of tracks that [we think] could be good for the show before they even start writing it. The conversation is like, ​‘oh shit, I wish we used this track in the last season… okay, well, let’s file it for the next season.”

Right from the start, there was a decent buzz about Industry (THE FACE was on it early, of course), but season one viewing figures weren’t exactly huge. The song selections back then – which ranged from Bicep to John Glacier and 070 Shake – felt tasteful and accurate to what twentysomethings living in London might have been listening to at the time. As the show surged in popularity, continued to soak up critical praise and recruited big name actors, the artists in the soundtrack got more famous. By season two, Ollie was liscensing tracks from Wu-Tang’s GZA, Talking Heads and Donna Summer. ​“The process has definitely got a lot easier for us in terms of clearing tracks,” Ollie says. Still, they occasionally find themselves getting attached to the idea of using a track for a scene, then having to come up with a plan B. ​“There was one song that got denied for us [in season four] that was really heartbreaking – I’m not allowed to say what it was! But yeah, it got denied. It was alluding to a sex moment. So I understand.”

With season four wrapping up this week, I decided to give Ollie a call to comb through the most emotive soundtrack moments with indulgent and nerdy detail. Enjoy.

“This song was actually a scripted cue that Mickey and Konrad put in. So my involvement really was doing the music edit to make it, and then clearing the rights for it. And it’s the hardest song ever to clear, because it’s basically [Pet Shop Boys’] medley of U2’s The Streets Have No Name and [the 1967 song] I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You – two massive tracks. But it was worth it.

In the scene, Henry’s just had this wild acid trip moment. It’s his 40^th birthday, his dad committed suicide on his 40^th birthday and Henry saw it happen. He views himself as a failure. He’s had all the chances in the world. His company failed. He tried his hand at being an MP – he failed at that. He’s depressed. He’s in the lowest state of his life. There’s been that moment where he attempts [suicide] in the car, and then it all tracks the back to the words of priest said and the words the Yasmin said and it’s like, fuck. He’s had the revelation that’s to go. And he’s kind of reborn from that whole chain of thought.

And you’ve got the Andy Williams’ version of I Can’t Take Your Eyes Off You when Yasmin and Henry are having sex on the car it is, but it’s beautiful and there’s that hilarious line of ​“spring is coming”. Then, there’s the Pet Shop Boys. I think this is the moment when the story for this season is really starting, it’s like that energising and they’re setting off on this new adventure.”

“What we were trying to do here is soundtrack Rishi’s mental state for that party. The scene is 15 minutes long and it was very complicated to put together. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. We tried different loads of different tracks to go before Set You Free and it wouldn’t work. So we launched off with Paris Angels’ All On You (Perfume) – an absolute fucking gem of a track. It’s one of the ultimate after party tracks, I would say. You’re going into that scene as the viewer thinking great, we love these party scenes, this is going to be quite fun.

And then you can see it’s starting to unravel during that conversation, and then you have to get those first kick drum beats of Vienna, you’ve got Jim Dyker shouting at Rishi and the [strange man is] pumping up the volume, and then it’s haunting. We tried a lot of songs that were really frenetic in their energy. And where we landed was Vienna, which stripped all of that out. And it was way more powerful because you’ve got all the chaos and the frantic energy already in the scene as it is.

You go into Rishi’s head. He doesn’t know who he is anymore. His whole character has been built around him chasing wealth and money and trade and he’s at this point where he’s lost his wife through tragic circumstances, he doesn’t have a family. He’s got no friends or work anymore. But he’s still got this drive to chase. And then, we land with N‑Trance when shit hits the fan. The different sections of the song work really well. You’ve got that really intense aggy moment with the distorted synths and the piercing sinewave sounds, then you’ve got that fucking euphoric, beautiful vocal chop breakdown section. It really captured the panic of Rishi, the different states that he was in, and then the realisation that he has a way out. This is the only thing that he can do: jump, risk it all.

He’s trapped at this moment, but then there’s the bit at the end where he breaks the fourth wall and he looks at the camera and he smiles. In a fucked-up way, it’s the the first time Rishi is free. He doesn’t have to chase anymore. He doesn’t need the industry that corrupted him.”

“This song was in our season one playlist for finding the tone of music for the show. A lot of what the show is about is the illusion of power and the things which aren’t what they seem. And this was particularly important for Tender – the facade of which all comes crashing down. The Eyes Without a Face was the perfect song for it.

That end scene with Sweetpea – and Mickey and Konrad haven’t explicitly told me this – but I’m pretty sure they wrote it so we could use this song. We know that Sweetpea and the team have just got to the surface a bit and found that information out. There’s a whole load more waiting for them. And I think Toheeb [Jimoh]‘s performance as Kwabena in that scene was so good because [the lyrics] are melancholic, but also quite dark. And he brought this upbeat energy to it with his rendition of the karaoke, which really contrasted with what Sweetpea is going through in the bathroom.”

“This was in the script from a very early stage. We needed a euphoric, slightly romantic track that could work for a slow-motion club scene. Mickey chose the track. We just love the Baroque style organ on it. We bookend the episode with it. It starts with that Baroque organ, but just over the black screen, and then we went cut straight into Yasmin and Henry having that fight.

There’s a deeper meaning to it. ​‘Verdis Quo’ is Latin for ​‘Where are you going?’ For a lot of people that love Industry, the show’s built on the relationship of Yasmin and Harper, and they didn’t really cross paths a lot in the whole season, until this moment where the story arcs cross and you’re like, ​‘Oh, they’re together again.’ And it’s like that question of, where are we going next? And it’s also the prelude for all the shit that happens in episode eight!”

“Turnstile are a very muscular band, both in the physical form of their members, and also in their sound – they’ve become this sort of arena-ready punk band. But also there’s tenderness in the way that Brendan Yates sings, especially on their slower songs like Magic Man. Henry is ripped, he’s hench, and at times he’s powerful and strong, but he’s also incredibly sensitive and vulnerable at times – even though there are lots of despicable qualities about his character.

When he’s arrested, there’s like a sigh of relief in him. When he’s getting marched out of his house by police in this scene, it’s like he’s given up his persona, he’s kind of accepted this fate. A big part of the Industry story is the illusion of power. And for many of these characters, like Henry and Whitney, they appear powerful you think that they’re kind of untouchable. But Henry hasn’t really had the power. He’s been played.”