How ‘Goosebumps: The Vanishing’ Cleared Four Minutes of Taylor Swift’s “Down Bad” and Crafted a Cinematic, Dual-Generation Soundtrack

For Manish Raval and Tom Wolfe, the duo behind Goosebumps: The Vanishing’s music supervision, playing in the sandbox of ’90s music is an opportunity to channel their childhoods. “It’s our soft spot,” Raval tells The Hollywood Reporter. 

That connection and appreciation both music supervisors have for the turn of the century’s endless library of hits is particularly useful in the Disney+ and Sony Television Studios series, which taps into R.L. Stines’ younger Gen X, Millennial and ‘90s-adjacent Gen Z audience via the show’s multiple timelines. 

“Going into Goosebumps, there wasn’t really a direction or specific vision in mind. We just knew we had a popular book series to support,” Raval says. “But we did know that we wanted to jump back and forth with time periods and that a lot of that story would be anchored in the music. So when we would jump back to the ’90s, we would have ’90s hit music. When we would be in the present day, we’d make sure audiences knew we were with present-day music.

“Even in just a public space,” adds Wolfe, while noting alongside Raval that their music selections are driven less by lyrical pointedness, and more by whether the song is the right “vibe,” tempo or instrumentation. “You want it to feel like everyone knows that public space’s feel and sound.”

The show’s time jump structure was established in season one and carried into season two, lending itself to what Raval calls their one-two-punch approach to setting up the first episode and — in cases like season one’s premiere and finale credit tracks — the last. 

“With [Travis Scott’s] ‘Goosebumps,’ we knew we had to use it, but the fun part was getting to bookend it with the Skylar Grey version at the end,” Raval says. “There was an unspoken feeling that we were going to use Travis Scott’s song. Then we came across the Skylar cover, and said, ‘Why don’t we end the season with this?’ [The showrunners] loved the idea.”

Now in season two, dubbed The Vanishing, needle drops like the Beastie Boys’ “Pass the Mic” and Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby” kick off the past and present-day storylines, respectively, for the New York-set mystery. 

“When we were looking to open this show, we wanted a very ’90s hip-hop, New York song, and there were a few really solid contenders that we were considering. But unfortunately, we just couldn’t use them because of language. They didn’t have clean versions,” says Raval. “And at the time that we were working on this episode, the Tommy Richmond song, it just started to blow up, so we knew this song would be so right now, and is so perfect for these characters who we need to cement in their storyline in today’s world.”

That approach was inspired by season one, where R.E.M’s “Drive” and Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy” set the tone for a teen horror-comedy set in the Pacific Northwest. That musical combination helped establish the period and orient viewers as they moved across decades, while — like the Beastie Boys to The Vanishing’s New York setting — serving as a subtle nod to some of the musical influences and contributions of season one’s location. 

“It established a specific sound that will then take us the rest of the season — this grunge sound with the cloudy weather and other 90s music,” says Raval. “Then to solidify that it’s ‘today,’ the Sam Smith song came about because there was a big party scene that we come back to throughout the season, and we knew we needed to start that moment with a banger that says now.”

Raval notes that he, Wolfe, Winston, and Letterman auditioned other songs for that season one bit — “there was a hip-hop song, the Sam Smith song, a Weeknd song that we looked at,” he tells THR. 

But similar to their approach to selecting the show’s other music, “there just tends to be a gut reaction. All of us in the room, usually when we hear one particular song, it’s just, ‘Ok, let’s go with it,’ and that’s what the Sam Smith moment was. It’s very cinematic. It lends itself to swooping shots of that small town, but also this idea that this storyline is as modern, as contemporary as can be.”

Cinematic could easily describe the entire show’s outlook on music supervision, both in its first season and now the David Schwimmer-led The Vanishing. Raval tells THR that’s partly influenced by who is at the show’s helm. “Upon seeing the first cuts of season one’s episodes, it was so cinematic. And Rob Letterman, who directed it and is one of the creators and showrunners, is a film director, so it immediately felt like we were working on a movie,” he adds. “For music supervision, that’s just wide open for us to just jump in there and start playing.”

That approach trickles right down to the series’ use of catchy, head-bopping tracks from both recognizable and up-and-coming artists to transition viewers to the credits. That “is not arbitrary” with this show, says Wolfe. “We’re giving it to you to hear those last moments.”

“The idea behind really kicking ass with the end credit song is about this being the last thing the viewer gets before they get off the couch. How do we want to leave them?… It’s valuable real estate when it comes to music supervision, and we love that. To Rob and Hillary’s credit, they always want to put importance on that moment,” Raval says. “Now and then, it’ll also be a little easter egg. We’ll drop 21 Savage very nonchalantly in the background of the beginning of an episode — just a throwaway use — but then it comes back at the end and makes you think.”

Alongside Letterman’s directing background and style, the show’s constant use of recognizable hits is due in part to how much the music supervisors and co-showrunners share a certain taste in music. “The showrunners, Hillary and Rob, and Tom and I share a very similar sensibility. They’re fans of music too, and we’re fans of the same music, which makes our job much easier. We’re able to talk about Digable Planets and Liz Phair,” he says. “They know who they are. They know the favorite songs from these artists.” 

More practically though, the big-screen feeling of Goosebumps music is about what is often a challenge in this work: budget. “We were afforded a pretty generous music licensing budget,” Wolfe tells THR. “They didn’t limit us at all.

“It makes all the difference to not have to hold back so much when you know you have support from the studio,” adds Raval. “There’s a very substantial budget, and it allows us to shoot for the stars.”

While there may be fewer times where budget restricts the Goosebumps music supervisors process, in those cases, they “reach out to our trusted labels and publishers and say, what do you have that maybe we haven’t heard of, that’s cool, that will fall within the specific budget range?”

Or, in the case of Taylor Swift’s “Down Bad,” off her Tortured Poets Department album, you set it to background a four-minute sequence, then cross your fingers.

“The first time we put the Taylor Swift song in episode two of season two, it was a four-minute use, and that was a happy accident. We said, ‘Just start it here,’ and then we let the song keep playing. It plays over a bunch of scenes, and it plays a bunch of different emotions between characters. I remember Tom and I having a panic attack right after. We thought, ‘This better clear. If this doesn’t clear, we are screwed,’” Raval recalls. “I remember sending it and Rob writing back, ‘Are you sure we can use this?’ And not knowing that just saying, ‘Yeah, let’s try it,’ and hoping it worked out and she was going to say yes. Luckily, she did.”

In some ways, because of their ability to secure bigger hits and Goosebumps’ multigenerational focus, the anthology series acts as a period piece and time capsule, sonically capturing two distinctive moments and their music trends. 

One when genres like grunge, alternative rock and hip-hop were at their heights (alongside another popular adaptation of Stines’ books), and another, which encapsulates a more recent moment of music that leans on blended genres, niche indie, and pop subgenres, and a growing presence of international influence with afrobeats, k-pop, reggaeton, and Latin artists more broadly.

A result of leaning so much into this atmospheric stage setting is who the streaming series can count among its playlist of artists. Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden, Billie Eilish, SZA, The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, En Vogue, Khalid, Phoenix and Ezra Koenig, and Alice in Chains are just among season one’s soundtrack. The Vanishing, which was released on Jan. 9, is even more packed with familiar acts and their chart-topping hits, from Doja Cat to System of a Down to St. Vincent. 

“Travis Scott, 21 Savage, Taylor Swift, Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter — these are all artists that are in the show this season representing the sound of our kids. Whereas in the ’90s, there were rock kids, metal kids, grunge kids,” says Raval. “Kids did listen to specific types of music, whereas I think the music of today, someone who listens to Taylor Swift and Charli XCX, may also be listening to Tommy Richmond. I think lines have blurred, genres blurred.”

While it might seem like having stricter genre boundaries is helpful to the music supervision process, Raval shares that while the duo loves their ‘90s connection, they have found their work on the show’s contemporary, aged-up spin on Stines’ characters more creatively freeing. 

“We strictly adhere to the genre rules with some of the ’90s stuff because we feel that was true of the time,” says Raval. “But for Tom and I, it’s been very liberating when we’re trying to find music to represent today’s listener or something that represents today’s music, that we don’t have to adhere to a genre. Childish Gambino and Taylor Swift can exist in the same series — are listened to by the same kids — and it totally is realistic.”

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Goosebumps: The Vanishing is now streaming all episodes on Disney+.