With over 340 million hours of viewing in its first week, it is safe to say that Wednesday, featuring Jenna Ortega and produced by Tim Burton, has quickly become one of the streaming platform’s biggest hits of the year. And, as with all great Netflix hits, the show is backed by a killer soundtrack. While the show dabbles with pop culture and makes some concrete references to songs, a lot of the official soundtrack is score-driven.
This is a perfectly normal course of action but might leave a lot of people scratching their heads as to how they can listen to all the music that inspired the show. Thankfully, one Spotify user has meticulously gone through the show and picked out every song that was played, referenced or casually mentioned in the hit show and created a perfect playlist.
Starring Jenna Ortega in the centre as the titular morbid anti-hero, Wednesday Addams is perhaps one of the best and most entertaining releases of 2022. Tim Burton serves a teen drama focusing on the iconic unsettling horror icon with the eccentric macabre horror quintessential to him. Ortega lives up to the legacy of Christina Ricci and Lisa Loring, who created a mark with their individual portrayal of Wednesday and adds her own flavour to this fan-favourite character.
Joined by Ricci, Gwendoline Christie, Luis Guzman, Catherine Zeta-Jones and many more, Ortega’s Wednesday is sent to Nevermore Academy, which is home to several outcasts like her, including vampires, werewolves, sirens and gorgons. As Wednesday struggles to live up to her mother’s legacy, she is caught in a turmoil that involves a bloody murder mystery, her family’s dark past and her traumatic psychic visions.
A 46-song playlist, the run of tracks shows the cultural breadth that Burton, Ortega and the rest of the star-studded cast delve into on Wednesday. From paying tribute to the masters such as Edith Piaf, Roy Orbison, The Rolling Stones and more, the show also doffed its cap to the new side of ethereal rock and roll with mentions of Florence and the Machine as well as Half Japanese and, of course, Lady Gaga.
Naturally, one of the show’s finest moments comes when Wednesday Addams, against her best intentions, finds herself at a dance for Nevermore Academy. While the rest of the unusual student body are dressed in white, Wednesday appears hea-to-toe in black and delivers a beguiling dance to The Cramps’ sludgy-punk hit ‘Goo Goo Muck’.
The rest of the playlist is equally inspiring and certainly deserves a spin when you’re next setting your sights on befriending a morbid detective in the making.