Prestige TV keeps co-opting and repurposing pop music

The Ringer

Westworld and The Handmaid’s Tale are the latest offenders, says Rob Harvilla. "What’s frustrating is that as we’re bombarded with more and more allegedly top-tier shows, they’re forced to bombard us with more and more bygone musical splendor, all clamoring for the right combination of sentimental nostalgia and modern internet-breaking audacity. It’s an arms race we are all bound to lose," he says. "There is simply too much TV dredging up too much of the music we love in a usually vain quest to steal some of that love for itself. The results can be appalling, sometimes intentionally so."