There really aren't any composers working on Bearwhile the FX series about chefs trying to create good food in Chicago is powered by needle drops: songs from an eclectic collection of artists that in Season 3 includes Beastie Boys, Giuseppe Verdi, Kate Bush, Kool & the Gang, Talking Heads, Weezer, Van Morrison, Radiohead, Taylor Swift and Nine Inch Nails. (There's a batch by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.)
Executive producers Josh Senior and Christopher Storer serve as the show’s music supervisors, and you can tell there’s a lot of personal passion that goes into mixing these songs — a mix of propulsive and/or moody tracks that often have deeper meaning to the show as a whole. Thus, below is a nearly complete breakdown of every song featured this season, episode by episode — though there are a few songs that eluded multiple attempts at being Shazam’ed. Consequence I will update this article once those gaps are filled in.
It should be noted that Senior and Storer include a lot of music this season, but they deserve praise for how often they actually let a song play over the course of an episode — sometimes the needle drops can be forceful or hastily incorporated into a soundtrack. But all of these tracks below get a welcome amount of time in the spotlight, while also underscoring the show’s funniest/most dramatic/most tense/all previous moments.
[Editor’s note: The following contains mild spoilers through the Season 3 finale of The Bear, “Forever.”]
Episode 1: “Tomorrow”
The Bear (FX)
• Nine Inch Nails – “Together”
While celebrating the season premiere of Bear credited with its score to “Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross,” the music used to compose this 30-minute look inside the chaos of Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) mind is, specifically, this 10-minute track from NIN’s 2020 album . Ghosts V. (A good reminder that the Ghosts Albums, not to mention the one from 1999. The fragile onewere early indicators of how well Reznor and Ross would adapt to the world of film and television scoring.)
Episode 2: “Next”
The Bear (FX)
• Eddie Vedder – “Save it for later”
• Radiohead – “(Beautiful Dream)”
Eddie Vedder's remake of The English Beat's “Save It For Later” appears a lot throughout this season, with an almost ethereal sound mix compared to the original version. In this episode specifically, it serves as the theme song over a traditional opening credits sequence (usually Bear Episodes don't have opening credits like this, but once a season or so they break that rule.) Compared to other episodes, this one is relatively music-free, but Radiohead makes another appearance on the soundtrack (season 1 used “Let Down” by OK computer) for the end credits.
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