26 Songs I Want to Hear in the Girls Reboot

It’s a shame that the Emmy for Outstanding Music Supervision was only instituted during its farewell season, because Girls really deserved to sweep for six years straight. The HBO series’ soundtrack, overseen by Manish Raval and Tom Wolfe, was a paragon of the form, punching up the show’s emotional moments and elevating its comedic beats to gut-busting, frequently excruciating heights. (“You can be my white Kate Moss tonight.”) Think back on that one Girls scene that imprinted itself on your psyche. Chances are, it was accompanied by one of Raval and Wolfe’s thoughtful selections. (For me, it’s when Aimee Mann’s “How Am I Different” closes out the Jessa-centric season two episode “Video Games.”)

So when Girls auteur Lena Dunham revealed the show would be returning to HBO for five episodes, my first thought—okay, second following a series of garbled expletives—was: What’s gonna be on the soundtrack? What song will Marnie butcher at karaoke this time? What will be playing while Hannah takes nudes? Will they go there and drop “Girls” by the Dare? There should be a few mandatory inclusions: something off the new Robyn album; a new original Jenny Lewis song, pretty please; and Grace Ives’ “Stupid Bitches,” which Dunham herself praised earlier this year. Alongside those, I’ve compiled a list of songs that I, personally, would like to hear on the Girls reboot soundtrack, with a few contributions from my trusted co-workers.*

Amaarae: “Counterfeit”
Audrey Hobert: “I Like to Touch People”
Caroline Polachek: “Bunny Is a Rider”
Christine and the Queens: “People, I’ve Been Sad”
CMAT: “Take a Sexy Picture of Me”
Cute Door: “Screen”
EQ (Estratosfera & Qiri): “B.S.A.S. (Si Alguna Vez te Sentís Sola de Noche”
Fcukers: “Play Me”
Fever Ray: “To the Moon and Back”
Grace Ives: “Stupid Bitches”
Ikeda: “Mapz”
A new original Jenny Lewis song
JT: “Girls Gone Wild”
Junglepussy: “Foreign Exchange”
An LCD Soundsystem song from American Dream that is not “Oh Baby”
Leikeli47: “Carry Anne”
Lucius: “Promises”
Mannequin Pussy: “Drunk II”
Mitski: “Should’ve Been Me”
Pop Smoke: “Dior”
Robyn: “Sexistential”
Smerz: “You Got Time and I Got Money”
St. Vincent: “At the Holiday Party”
Tinashe: “Bouncin”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs & Perfume Genius: “Spitting off the Edge of the World”
Zara Larsson: “Pretty Ugly”

*For the purposes of this list I have constrained myself to songs released after the series finale air date of April 16, 2017.

Walden Green is a music writer and cultural critic who joined Pitchfork in 2024. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, his work has appeared in Dirt, The Fader, and Philadelphia. He lives in New York. ... Read More