Now that we are safely into the throes of the summer, do you have a single that you are obsessed with yet? Surely, you’ve heard THĒ’s “Wish You Were Me,” right? Oh, you haven’t heard of THĒ? Where have you been–her song is everywhere. It feels like this bop of a song should be taking over our lives, and that’s thanks to the collaboration between Michael Blum, Sophie Rose and David Archuleta. With its bubbly ascension of a melody line and it’s playfully taunting lyrics, it’s easy to hear how it burrows into your brain for the fifth season of Only Murders in the Building.
It’s a right of passage for people to get obsessed with a new pop girly as we move into the summer months. Maybe we just assume that we are in safe hands when we hear those gentle, sultry tones. I had to know who Blum and Rose were currently listening to on a loop.
“I am personally obsessed with Zara Larsson right now,” Rose says. “I think she’s absolutely killing it, and her rollout coming into summer with the remix album has been making me very, very excited.”
“I have been very obsessed with Raye for the past couple of years, and I think her music is so fresh and vintage at the same time,” Blum says. “Of course, also Olivia Dean. She has brought me so much joy in the last year, especially the last six months. And who could forget Thé?”
The first time that I heard this song (you can hear a snipper here) in the fifth season of Only Murders, I reached for my phone to see if the song already existed out in the world and Beanie Feldstein did a cover of it. If THĒ’s hit has permeated everyone’s ears and the culture at large, how did Rose and Blum feel about the pressures to create a literal smash?
“When we heard the brief that we were going to write a song that sounded like a number one hit, it wasn’t dissimilar to what we do all the time,” Rose says. “It’s a lot easier to have collaborators and work in a room, so we can bounce ideas off of. Maybe we can see if the melody can be even catchier or someone can tell us if a lyric needs to be more clever or balanced.”
Blum has worked with Archuleta for a number of years, and he briefly explains how even showrunner John Hoffman knew that this collaboration was a perfect fit.
“I did a lot of his EP last year, and he has such great taste,” Blum says. “I really could listen to his voice sing anything, because it feels like molasses going into your eardrums–it’s truly my favorite voice. In addition to coming up with great ideas, he’ll hear something and he will know exactly how it should be tweaked to fit the tone of what we are going for. We were hoping that it would feel like a song that you want to Google it. John Hoffman is friends with David and he had heard the song that I had done with him, “Crème Brulée,” and John asked him if he would be interested in writing something that would sound like a breakout. It felt really aligned with what David and I have worked on previously. It didn’t feel like an assignment.”
Every time I listen to “Wish That You Were Me” I can’t help think of a candy-coated ride. Maybe your favorite girly makes you visualize movement and color the way that THĒ’s hit song does within the series. The first time we hear the song on screen, Feldstein’s character is in an elevator when Charles, Mabel, and Detective Williams walk in. Blum and Rose go on to explain that they new the bounciness of the melody would lure listeners in, and Blum explains that the taunting quality fits directly in line with the relationship between THĒ and Mabel.
“The production really gives it this buoyancy,” Rose says. “One thing that we like to think about is how the melody goes down before it glides back up to echo that good feeling. The good vibes come immediately, and we realized that that floating quality could be very satisfying. That’s definitely part it.”
“It’s also a taunt for Mabel, because it sounds like ‘na-na-na-na-na-naah’, which was something that John wanted,” Blum says. “Sophie was able to nail that melody for the chorus, and it just felt so, so perfect. That aligned so much with the relationship between Mabel and Beanie’s character, and seeing all of that come together was my favorite part of the process of this coming together. When I got to be there at the recording session, and she’s the type of great performer who can imbue her voice with that character. It’s all there in the vocals.”
Only Murders in the Building is streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
