Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 novel, Daisy Jones & The Six, became a hit with readers, in part because it’s everything you’d want in a behind-the-scenes look at the rise and fall of an iconic rock band — even a fictional one. In book form, however, we didn’t get to hear the magic that was created when Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne came together, baring their souls to write music, while fighting their undeniable attraction. Amazon Prime’s series remedied that problem, with two dozen original songs being created to flesh out the band’s story for its screen adaptation. Below are my rankings of the best of those tunes.
An established list of songwriters — including Blake Mills, Jackson Browne, Phoebe Bridgers, and Marcus Mumford — produced original music for the series, compiling 11 tracks for the Daisy Jones & The Six album, Aurora, on which Riley Keough, Sam Claflin and the rest of the cast members actually sang and performed. The other songs included music said to be written by the band members earlier in their career — like The Dunne Brothers’ “Flip the Switch” — and by other characters in the series — like Wyatt Stone’s “Stumbled on Sublime.” Some ditties were featured more prominently than others, and these, to me, made the biggest impact:
