Ali Wong and Steven Yeun in Beef.
Netflix
[Warning: This piece contains mild spoilers for Beef S1]
There’s a moment in Beef, the excellent and twisty new Netflix series, in which down-on-his-luck Danny (Steven Yeun) doubts his gift-giving ability. He has bought a house plant for married couple George (Joseph Lee) and Amy (Ali Wong), forgetting that Amy owns the company that sells the plant. Acknowledging the mistake, Danny says, “It’s like giving Linkin Park a copy of Hybrid Theory.” An elder millennial, Danny’s teen years are long behind him — but his unprocessed rage is still tied inextricably to the early 2000s nu-metal scene. Beef is primarily about blind fury, the gift of a house plant very much unindicative of the dramatic heights it goes on to scale, but that tantrum-like energy runs throughout. There is perhaps no genre of music better suited to flipping out over self-loathing and perceived hardships than nu-metal, which makes the soundtrack work so well.
The Hybrid Theory namecheck is one of a number of musical cues and references Beef uses to tap into the inner psyches of Danny and Amy, whose lives spiral out of control after a road rage incident. Throughout the 10 episodes there are needle drops from Limp Bizkit, System of a Down, and Hoobastank, whose 2004 single “The Reason” soundtracks a scene when Danny pisses on Amy’s bathroom floor as an act of petty revenge. There’s a sense of playfulness to these song choices (“The Reason” begins with the line “I'm not a perfect person,” apt descriptions of every character in Beef), but it also feels authentic. The series taps into a notions of lethargy and wasted potential that can strike in people both clearly flailing (Danny’s business is struggling and we see him plan his own suicide) and outwardly successful (Amy is married with a cute daughter and sells her company for $100 million).
Either bored or frustrated with their lives, their chance encounter unlocks a new sense of purpose as they wage war on each other. Prior to their highway incident they were lost and looking for a way out. Of course these characters would revert to nostalgia for comfort, even something as simple as a “00s Rock Anthems” Spotify playlist. Beef’s strength is to weaponize that comfort blanket music and use it to show their true selves.
At no point is this mix of being painfully washed and yet still fighting clearer than when Danny steps up to perform a song during a church group meeting. Running his fingers along the fretboard of an acoustic guitar, he plays the opening chords of Incubus’ “Drive” and delivers the song with the earnestness of a man both deep in despair and with a clear memory of his favorite baggy jeans and wallet chain. The song is an easily strummed classic, “Wonderwall” for the Warped Tour generation, and Yeun sings it beautifully. Uncertainty, it argues, is a derailing force. What you need to prosper is to grab hold of the wheel. That Danny interprets this as meaning he should further pursue a vendetta against a woman who cut him off in a parking lot says a lot about the wild decision making that is the engine of the series.
In an interview with Netflix’s in-house Queue, Beef music supervisor Tiffany Anders says she initially thought the series was set three decades ago as creator Lee Sung Jin had earmarked so many older songs in his script. He had wanted to focus solely on ‘90s alt-rock, which is also represented strongly in the series with songs by Smashing Pumpkins, Bush, and Björk all popping up at various stages. “The angsty rage to that era of music definitely suited the story and added to the tone of what was happening within these characters’ worlds,” Anders explains. “There was a real sense of apathy and loneliness, a very self-aware and confessional quality to the lyrics.”
It was Anders pushing to use the spiritually aligned Hoobastank in the pilot that sent them down a wider path, a fortuitous choice that pushes the soundtrack out of one specific era and more towards a more wide ranging understanding of how people fill the void they feel inside.
Those listening closely will have spotted an undeniable nu-metal revival in recent times, from the big riffs on 100 gecs’ new album to Rina Sawayama’s detuned vision of what pop can be. It’s elsewhere, too; Deftones are the muse of Marc Jacobs’ Heaven label and Linkin Park recently celebrated 20 years of Meteora with a widely-praised reissue of their 2003 album. These things move in cycles and it's clear that rap rock is next up on the nostalgia carousel. While undeniably fitting in with this trend, Beef stands apart by refusing to make its music a purely celebratory reflection. It recognizes the catharsis of rage as well as asking why the anger doesn’t fully subside. Shouldn’t life be better by now? As Beef careers toward its dramatic ending, it shows us just how much further there is to fall.
