> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://wymz.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Shards Soundtrack Tells Us What the Characters Won’t - URL: https://wymz.ghost.io/the-shards-soundtrack-tells-us-what-the-characters-wont/ - Published: 2026-08-23T07:18:59.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-24T05:48:09.000Z - Author: J These characters are young enough to be told that their whole lives are ahead of them. Yet nearly every adult around them behaves as if their youth is an opening, an opportunity to flatter, employ, manipulate, or frighten them. A serial killer is hunting them, as are people whose appetites are less fatal but no less disturbing. I have only watched five episodes and have not yet read Bret Easton Ellis’s novel. I cannot say where the series will land. But the soundtrack tells us way more than these characters are willing to let on. And in this narration-heavy series, it helps to listen to what is being said in the background and heard between the lines. The series is music-supervised by Amanda Krieg Thomas, a frequent collaborator within Ryan Murphy’s television universe, with an original score by David Klotz and Morgan Kibby and new music from Troye Sivan, Leland and cast member Hayes Warner. The needle drops are a competing narrator. The main character, Bret, studies everyone around him and exposes their trauma for the audience’s consumption. The songs expose what he leaves out. ## “Bad Boys Get Spanked” The Pretenders It’s the car chase between Bret and Robert Mallory. They race through Los Angeles in luxury cars, breaking laws with the confidence of boys who have never had to imagine themselves inside a police report or have been in too many to count. Bret begins as the pursuer. Then Robert gets behind him and taps his bumper just as Chrissie Hynde sings the song’s title as a threat. Bad boys get spanked. Bret is chasing a person who distorts the truth as easily as he does. Later, Robert tells him, “When you talk to me, you’re really talking to yourself, dude.” It is the first line in the series that seems capable of puncturing Bret’s moral authority. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ae/4a/ae4a934f-2d67-4163-8af2-29e308943e8d/content/images/2026/08/SHA_101_UHD_SDR.0154939.jpg) Igby Rigney and Homer Gere. Photo: FX Bret narrates as though he has access to the windows of everyone else’s soul. He can identify a friend’s weakness, a girlfriend’s need, and a stranger’s deception. When the story approaches his own secrets, his narration goes quiet. At Debbie’s house, Ryan tells him they cannot continue whatever has been happening between them. Bret looks close to tears, but for the audience, the boy who turns every expression into prose suddenly has nothing to say. This song colors the car chase. Bret’s obsession with Robert may be suspicion, attraction, or the well of self-denial and hostility that develop when attraction cannot be admitted. This is my first reason to keep watching. He may attempt to control the story, but the show does not appear to trust him completely. That’s what the soundtrack is for. ## “Don’t You Want Me” The Human League Debbie Schaffer wants her boyfriend, Bret, to want her. Bret appears to want almost anyone but her, except when they are in public. It would be easy to describe these teenagers as shallow, and they often are. But there’s something relatable about the wandering eye of your lover feeling like an existential threat. This is also where the series begins to feel much more adult than its school setting suggests. Bret’s sexuality becomes information that older men use. When Terry Schaffer—his girlfriend’s dad—invites him to lunch, ostensibly to discuss his writing, the conversation shifts toward which boys Bret finds attractive and whether he has slept with them. Terry never has to state what he wants. It’s diabolically obvious. And his money, his access to Hollywood, and the possibility of a professional future prevent him from ever needing to make that explicit proposition. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ae/4a/ae4a934f-2d67-4163-8af2-29e308943e8d/content/images/2026/08/SHA_102_UHD_SDR.0134142.jpg) Wes Bentley and Igby Rigney. Photo: FX Bret can see the calculation, yet he remains seated. Even his own wealth and power cannot protect him from someone with more of it. “Don’t You Want Me” is usually heard as an enormous, slightly camp pop record. Here, it becomes the question that governs almost every relationship in the show. It is asked romantically, sexually, professionally, and socially. It makes you wonder how much can be taken from these children before they realize that their whole childhood has been stolen. ## “Rapture” Blondie And where are all the Black people? The Brown people? The third episode kicks the door open in the series’ overwhelmingly white social world. Debbie watches *Dance Off!*, a fictional local television program populated by the most racially diverse group of teenagers the show has presented. A teenager in sunglasses and an Afro dances on the screen while Bret’s narration refers to shows dancers as “teenagers like us.” I paused there. Who is us? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ae/4a/ae4a934f-2d67-4163-8af2-29e308943e8d/content/images/2026/08/102_IMG_6043.jpeg) Kaia Gerber, Igby Rigney, Hayes Warner, Homer Gere, and Graham Campbell. Photo: FX The series has established Bret’s world as rich, white, and insulated. The pilot’s credited songs were likewise overwhelming white artists and predominantly white bands. By the third episode, more color has entered the frame, but through television, contained, choreographed, and immediately available for consumption. The song selected is Blondie’s “Rapture,” a landmark pop record built from the group’s encounter with rap culture. Debbie becomes entranced by Cha Cha Rodriguez, the dancer who seems to own the camera. Cha Cha possesses, at least on television, the thing Debbie has been trying to extract from Bret. It’s the ability to command attention without begging for it. This pattern has continued across the five episodes I have seen. People of color become most visible when Bret’s world requires music, dancing, service, or spectacle. The show may be intentionally representing the cultural tunnel vision of an elite white circle in 1981 Los Angeles. I wonder if this enclosed social world is historical record or artistic liberty—either way, every few scenes I’m scanning the crowd for a teenager like me. ## “The Weakness in Me” Joan Armatrading Episode four gives the opening narration, usually reserved for Bret, to Ryan, one of the few people who know a secret Bret refuses to speak aloud. The change makes the show feel older almost immediately. Bret has been describing everyone else from a safe distance. Ryan knows what it is like to be one of the things Bret edits out. The episode reminds us of the thresholds in life. Ryan talks about a breakfast cereal he will one day no longer be able to buy and counts down, from the future, the days remaining in his life. Bret describes adulthood as a division between before and after, except the moment when childhood ends may arrive long before a person knows to mourn it. At Robert’s party, Susan and Thom slow-dance in matching clothes while Joan Armatrading’s “The Weakness in Me” plays. It is one of the prettiest images the show has produced. It is also a lie. The song is heartbreaking. Even more so for people who have abandoned a good lover for someone else. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ae/4a/ae4a934f-2d67-4163-8af2-29e308943e8d/content/images/2026/08/SHAR_A104_Sub.11-copy.jpg) Graham Campbell and Kaia Gerber. Photo: FX Armatrading’s voice gives the dance its emotional language, but the language contradicts the image. Susan Reynolds and Thom Wright look coordinated enough to belong together while suspicion, jealousy, and Robert’s presence are already pulling them apart. That dissonance describes the larger group. When you get close enough, they are keeping secrets and studying every new alliance as a potential betrayal. The friendship may be real, but so is the possibility that its image has outlived its substance. There are relationships we continue because the photograph of them remains beautiful. There are friendships held together by the number of years already invested, social circles that persist because leaving would require admitting there is nowhere else to go, and romances that survive primarily as an agreement not to look too closely. Armatrading’s song is another reason to keep watching because it reveals the series at its most humane. Weakness is not the same as innocence. These characters hurt one another, knowingly. ## “Just Can’t Get Enough” Depeche Mode The song that stays with me arrives at the end. Debbie finds Cha Cha murdered in a bathroom stall, and Really Rhonda, missing and presumed dead, rolls back onto the set, bloodied and bruised. The track's brightness does not soften the horror. The title could describe everyone there. They cannot get enough attention, cocaine, sex, control, danger, or proof that somebody wants them. After five episodes, I am no longer most disturbed by the possibility of a single serial killer. The Trawler is terrifying because he turns young people into objects inside his ritual. But nearly every adult institution surrounding these teenagers is doing a version of the same thing. Hollywood sees marketable bodies. Parents see extensions of themselves. Predatory men see uncertainty they can exploit. Television sees content. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ae/4a/ae4a934f-2d67-4163-8af2-29e308943e8d/content/images/2026/08/Shards_Ep104-RayM-00050.jpg) Home Gere. Photo: FX There’s a hellish feeling closing in, but these characters are nowhere close to slowing down. They speed, lie, cheat, and treat other people as disposable. They are not especially easy to love. ## Sign up for WYMZ News to feed your whimsy. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.