Behind the Scenes of the ‘Paradise’ Soundtrack: How Covers of Elvis Presley and Phil Collins Shaped the Show’s Dystopian World
According to the CinemaDrame News Agency, following the conclusion of the first season of Hulu’s series Paradise, creator Dan Fogelman informed his music supervisors, Tom Wolfe and Manish Raval, that Graceland—the iconic home of Elvis Presley—would play a central role in the upcoming season.
The second season of this dystopian drama kicks off in Memphis, Tennessee, years before an extinction-level event levels the planet. This season introduces viewers to the backstory of Annie Kelly (played brilliantly by Shailene Woodley). After growing up caring for her mentally ill mother, Annie pushes through with sheer resilience to reach her third year of medical school before a nervous breakdown forces her to drop out. Drifting and lost, she finds a job as a tour guide at Graceland and befriends a security guard named Gail (Angel Laketa Moore). Annie and Gail are both at Graceland on the fateful day a black cloud envelops the globe.
Leaning into this storyline, Tom Wolfe curated a collection of cover versions of Elvis Presley’s tracks rather than using the original recordings. Speaking to the media, he explained, “The approach fitted into the tone of the show: we’re looking at a world that feels familiar, but isn’t.”
Noting that numerous covers of Elvis tracks exist, Wolfe said, “We split them into two buckets. One was modern updates—songs that were covered but sounded totally different. The other was tracks that remained faithful to the original and were easily identifiable.” Because Elvis was not a songwriter himself, securing the rights to the music proved to be a smooth process. Beyond Elvis, Wolfe shared the background stories of tracking down covers for Phil Collins and Counting Crows tracks.
Zooey Deschanel recorded this version with her band. Wolfe noted, “We have a long history with Zooey because we did New Girl. We loved the song; it was on one of our playlists, and our editor put it in the scene.” Regarding the famous track “Unchained Melody,” which has been covered countless times, Wolfe stated, “We pick versions we connect with or feel have a dramatic color that suits the show. This version was exactly what we loved.”
For the Phil Collins classic, Wolfe had used a different version by Joyner in season one, which he described as “not as over-the-top dramatic.” It was a musical choice originally pitched to Wolfe by Fogelman. Wolfe said, “We reached out to different people to see who wanted to do a really dark version of this. Soundwall was one of the bands we reached out to. We didn’t know John Coggins, but he has a studio in Thousand Oaks. A friend introduced us, and he sent over this version. We thought it might be too dramatic to be accepted, but Dan Fogelman loved it and it worked beautifully with the picture.”
In episode four, Wolfe utilized Ingrid Michaelson’s cover of an Elvis classic. Following the episode’s broadcast, he shared, “We got a lovely note from her. She totally forgot she recorded it, and this brought it back to her memory. She was thrilled to have it used and heard again.” Wolfe added that the cover was over 10 years old, but once placed against the picture, he knew it was the definitive choice.
“This was another situation where we knew we wanted to reprise the Counting Crows song from earlier in the episode. We went to our friends or people we work with; Freedom Fry is a husband-and-wife music team based in LA.” Wolfe said, “We went to them and said, ‘Do you want to do this?’ and they’re always down to do stuff. They delivered it, and everyone who heard it loved it immediately. The editors, Dan Fogelman, and the other producers liked it, and it went straight to the end credits of episode five. It’s the exact opposite of the over-the-top dramatic covers we talked about; it’s small, intimate, acoustic, just voice and guitar.”
Wolfe concluded, “The songwriter, Joey Tempest, approved the license, but made it conditional on approving the version we used. We initially sent a different version of the song, which he rejected because he wasn’t happy with the singer’s performance. So we went back to Soundwall for this, and they prepared a new version. We sent it back to Joey, and he approved it. He only had one critique regarding a word in one of the verses; John had used the wrong word, so we just had to fix that single word and it was good to go.”
