Music Supervisor Scott Vener Talks About Placing Songs, Working With Kanye West, & Getting The Nod From JAY-Z
Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for Something in the Water.
Vener is best known for his work on ‘Entourage’ and ‘Ballers.’
A soundtrack can make or break a TV show, but if music supervisor Scott Vener’s involved, chances are it’s going to make it. Vener’s big break came in 2004, when he was asked to curate the soundtrack for HBO’s Entourage.
His work helped introduce the show’s fans to artists like Rihanna (yes, Rihanna) and Kid Cudi, as well as renewed audiences’ love for classics by Muddy Waters and The Clash. By 2007, his song selection had become so influential, Kanye West’s team sought out Vener himself to premiere ‘Ye’s “Good Life” on an episode of the series.
Since then, Vener’s career has been one you can only dream of, adding shows like 90210 and Ballers to his resume, as well as the 2015 film DOPE and dozens of commercials. In 2015, he also linked up with longtime friend Pharrell for the Beats 1 radio show OTHERtone, which is now in its fifth season.
Genius caught up with Vener over the phone to discuss his music supervision process, some of his most iconic work on Entourage, and what artists we can expect to hear on the upcoming season of Ballers.
Interview by Leah Degrazia
I read a quote from Pharrell saying that he can’t even figure out how you’re finding the new music you show him. Can you tell me a little bit about your secret?
It’s not like any one way. It’s just a lot of trial and error. One of the biggest ways to do it is if you know what kind of music is about to break, if you have an ear for it, you can see a song starting to trend upwards.
The most helpful way for me to find more music like that is at the very early stages. You can do reverse engineering where you see what kids are talking about early and what they are listening to. Then, I’ll jump into the artists that they’re following.
Tumblr used to be a big resource for me. When people would post music on Tumblr, I would see what other artists they posted. If the kid had a music blog that probably only had 10 followers on it but I liked 50 percent of the songs, then I would save them on a folder.
I would have a folder in my browser called “My A&R Staff,” and it’s all these kids that don’t even know they work for me who post music all the time. I just see what they’re listening to, and then obviously, I have to have the ear enough to figure out if it’s something I like and just go from there. I don’t bother myself too much with music that everyone already is celebrating. I like to keep it moving.
Walk us through the music supervision process. How does a song get from you to a director, editor, and then into the final scene?
Well, there’s a lot of ways. I’ll just use Ballers as an example. The beginning of Ballers, I’ll make a library of music for the editors to cut to. So it’ll be all songs that I just like. But I haven’t seen the scenes yet so I don’t know what goes where. The work flow wouldn’t be as good if they were dependent on me for every single scene.
So I create 200 songs and kind of put them in folders of different genres and tempos, and as they’re cutting stuff together, they’ll try stuff. Sometimes the stuff will stay in a scene, and most of the time, I’ll just replace it with things that I like or feel are better. It all stems from me going out and looking for songs or me seeing the scene and thinking to myself, “This is better.”
It’s not that complicated. It’s just building out a big library of music for them to choose from and then kind of working more towards the final goal as you get to see what’s happening on screen. We lock the music three, four months ahead of time so I have to be even further ahead of what people are listening to, to make it feel like it’s brand new when it does come out.
How do you use the music to evoke emotion or tie back to what’s happening on the screen?
I mean that’s just instinct I guess. That’s the most important part: to serve the scene first and to make people emotionally invested in what’s happening. Every scene’s different so there’s probably a different reason why we use a certain song with every scene.
Instinct is important but also being able to recognize an emotion that you’re trying to convey on the screen and hearing that emotion within the song so that everything feels right.
Has there ever been a song that you really wanted for a show but you couldn’t get it because of licensing?
Every De La Soul song. They never cleared all the samples in the music so you can’t use it. I’m sure they would love it. Every project I’ve ever worked on, I would love to use some of De La Soul’s music.
What else? We were turned down by The Beatles on Entourage. I think the The White Stripes turned us down once. Those are the only two artists that have turned us down. The Beatles and the White Stripes. Those were both for Entourage.
If you could, what new songs would you put on TV tomorrow?
I don’t want to give away the good ones ‘cause I wanna use them. But you know who I love right now and I don’t think most people would expect me to love him? 10k.Caash. I love the energy of his music. It’s reminds me of 2 Live Crew.
If you could go back in time and work as the music supervisor for a show that already aired, what show would you choose?
They did an amazing job but it would be the The Sopranos or The Wire. It’s obnoxious for me to say that I would want to redo it ‘cause it was perfect, but I’ve always wanted to do a drama and I haven’t done a one-hour drama yet.
The reason I wanna do a one-hour drama is ‘cause there’s more emotional scenes and montages and the music has more time to breathe, whereas on a half-hour show every edit is quick and there’s not a lot of room for a lot of scenes to breathe 'cause you have to tell a story in 30 minutes. With an hour you have more time to let things feel more real and longer scenes where music can play.
Music supervisors love two parts of a film or television, which is the montage and the end credits. Or an opening credit. We don’t want music playing while there’s all this dialogue ‘cause then they just make the music really loud.
Do you prefer scoring for movies, TV shows, or commercials?
Well commercials pay the most. TV, more people watch it and the turn around is much quicker. I actually hate working on movies because sometimes it takes a year before the movie comes out and it takes a year of working on it and it’s just such a long process and it takes away from all the things that I love about working on music supervision, which is being first with music. By the time the songs come out, they’ve already come out and it looks like you’re just following a trend as opposed to setting one.
Did you pick Lil Wayne’s “Right Above It” as the theme song for Ballers?
I did not.
Do you not pick the shows’ theme songs?
No, I do. I have an opinion on it, but that was Stephen Levinson, who created the show, who really wanted that. I mean, if I were going to pick a Lil Wayne or Drake song, that would be, like, my 60th favorite. But it worked. The title cards and everything that they put in there made it work.
It’s funny because the minute it started airing, the song started appearing on ESPN. They definitely reintroduced that song into the air, and it was attributed to sports. But I fought it. I’ll be honest. So when I’m wrong, I’m wrong.
How did debuting Kanye’s “Good Life” on Entourage come about? Was that your idea or Kanye’s idea?
Me and Gee Roberson, who was Kanye’s manager at the time, had been talking about, “Let’s get Kanye on the show. What music does he have coming out?” I’m sure he talked about it with [Kanye] but I wasn’t involved in that part of it.
He obviously was a fan of the show or he wouldn’t have done it. And then Gee played me a few songs in the studio and I remember loving “Good Life.” I think it was going to be the next single anyways.
They kept telling us, “Alright, we’re gonna give you a Kanye song for his episode.” We knew he was shooting an episode, but they hadn’t given it to us yet. Then he finally gave us “Good Life “ and that was the first time everybody got to hear it, and all the radio stations were freaking out because, “How did TV get it before radio?” Because radio is supposed to be the most important medium for all music. Everyone reacted after that night, and it was like a huge moment for his music. And us.
What made you pick JAY-Z’s “In My Lifetime” for E’s proposal scene on Entourage?
It’s one of my favorite JAY-Z songs and I thought, “What an opportunity to use that song in the scene when I knew that no other show or movie is gonna use that song.” I think we’re the first and we’ll probably be the last to ever use that. And Jay is very picky about where he lets his music go, so us being able to get that song wasn’t even a lock.
I was actually more nervous about them not allowing us to use it because I knew that that song means so much to him. He’s very precious about where his music goes. And it worked so well in the scene.
I remember seeing him two months after it aired, I saw him at Clive Davis’s Grammy party, and him walking up to me and patting me on the back and just nodding his head, inferring that it was great and that made me feel great.
There’s an old Twitter thread of Entourage fans trying to get you to put Omarion’s song “Entourage” on Entourage and you obviously didn’t. Why did you decide not to?
That’s funny because I probably tweeted “I would never use a song called ‘Entourage’ on Entourage.” I would never do that. I have a couple rules. Actually, the Kanye episode was unique because it actually broke a rule, where if an actor was playing a role, I’m not gonna use their music. But Kanye was playing Kanye, and that’s why it was perfect for the scene. Normally I don’t think I would do that.
There’s this one movie, the movie is called Narc. Busta Rhymes plays a drug dealer or something. They start playing a Busta Rhymes song in the scene, and he’s not even playing himself as Busta Rhymes. And that just totally takes you out of the scene. I hated that. I always promised myself I would never do that.
That would be like me playing Kid Cudi’s music while he’s walking in How to Make It in America. That would just be weird. Kid Cudi would never ask me to do that. You’re making them compete against themselves.
But it was different in the Kanye scene because he’s playing Kanye, he’s not even on the screen once the lyrics start to kick in, and no one had ever heard the song before so there’s no familiarity reference, you know?
You mentioned you knew the final song for the last scene of Entourage for several years, how did you know Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California” was the right pick?
I didn’t. It just happened. There’s no way to know. They shot the scene and edited it and they didn’t edit around the music. It just worked. It hit the beat, it was just one of those situations where it was like a miracle. I didn’t even know how they were going to end it, but I listened to the lyrics of that song and it felt like that could be the ending of Entourage–before we even knew where they were going with it.
I always had it in the back of my mind to use a Led Zeppelin song, because that would be the holy grail of music to be able to use it. That’s a huge moment. Number one, it’s really expensive. Number two, they are extremely precious about where their music would go. And if you google it after it aired, there’s an article online about how it’s was one of the most Shazamed songs on television–because kids didn’t even know their music. They thought it was a new song. That’s how crazy it was. That’s how precious they are about their music. Because it doesn’t appear in anything.
Finally, can you tease what songs or artists might be featured on the Ballers season five soundtrack?
I know for sure I want to use DaBaby, 10K.Caash, this artist Diamond Café. I haven’t started working on it yet, so I don’t really know. This new A$AP Ferg and Pharrell stuff–I hope I’m allowed to say that–is amazing. I love Shamina. JPEGMAFIA has some sick beats. There are some smaller unknown artists that I have, but I don’t want to give out their names yet. I don’t want another show using it before me.
