The 10 best needle drops in Yellowjackets

This is another song that’s been everywhere: ads, sports, film, and TV—even the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics. It’s the soundtrack for walking to the parking lot after watching the San Francisco Giants play (and probably lose) a home game, fireworks bursting in the sky overhead. But in Yellowjackets, that’s not what we get. We get a 17-year-old enduring birth in a murder cabin surrounded by freaked out fellow teens set to a “woo-hoo” chorus and a distortion-heavy, grunge bass. If you recall the music video, it placed the band members in a small room, the volume from the amps blowing them back, causing their bodies to slam against their surroundings. Birth is kind of a banged-up-against-walls, chaotic experience, if you think about it—certainly for Shauna, unmedicated and alongside ill-equipped pals as she was. It creates a jarring juxtaposition, fun times versus a pain marathon. And it works. (Do we get to say it blurs the line between excitement and anxiety? Are we allowed to make dumb puns about this?)

The song’s background-music vibe (is that mean?) is reflected in the images of the friends and frenemies twirling, hugging, and drinking around the campfire in the present timeline. But those are intercut with the sheer body horror of Shauna punching and kicking the shit out of Lottie back in the murder cabin days. Every time Live’s lead singer Ed Kowalczyk sings “I can feel it,” as Shauna lands another blow, it sends an eerie twinge up the spine. Ouch. We’re glad we can’t. (Interestingly, this song is also about births and deaths occurring simultaneously in a hospital-like setting.)

There’s magic in this choice. If you’re not familiar with the song, it’s still easy to respond on an emotional level to the delicate vocals and intimate presence of the acoustic guitar quietly fading in as Shauna holds her newborn for the first time (in what is later revealed to have been a tragic hallucination, but hey, it’s nice to imagine for a little while). Upon closer listening, certain phrases stand out as relevant: “I’ve got a joke I’ve been dying to tell you” as Shauna gazes upon her son she’s been dying to meet, “the silent kid” (foreshadowing?). The scene then transitions from the cabin in the wilderness to a car on a woodsy road, with Van and Taissa inside. The song fades, the episode trucks along, but if you know “Pitseleh,” and it gets in your head (here comes the magic trick) you soon reach the soaring bridge (“no one deserves it”) and you’re right back there with Shauna in the dark, pleading with the others to say that they hear her dead baby crying.