#120: Lucy Bright, Music Supervisor

Best Girl Grip

This week, my guest is music supervisor Lucy Bright.

Lucy started out at Mute Records working with artists such as Nick Cave and Depeche Mode, before moving to Warner Classics for six years and then leaving to manage composer Michael Nyman. She joined the film and TV department of publisher Music Sales (now Wise Music) in 2008 and worked there for a decade. In 2020 she launched her own music publishing company, Bright Notion Music, signing the composers like Anne Nikitin, Jed Kurzel and Tamar-kali Brown.

Lucy has supervised some of the most critically-acclaimed British films and TV shows in recent years including The Unloved, The Arbor, Slow West, Southcliffe, McMafia, This is England ‘90, Daphne, The Virtues, The Nest, Life After Life and BAFTA-winning short The Swimmer.

Most recently, she has worked on two forthcoming films: Charlotte Wells’ directorial debut AFTERSUN, which is showing at this year’s London Film Festival and then coming to UK cinemas via MUBI on 18th November, and I can testify it has a truly phenomenal soundtrack and Todd Field’s TÁR, set within the world of classical music in which Cate Blanchett plays the first female conductor of a German orchestra.It recently premiered to critical acclaim at the Venice Film Festival and is one of my most hotly anticipated films of the year.

We spoke about how Lucy got her start in the music industry and then gradually discovered the role of music supervision, getting her first credit as a music supervisor on Samantha Morton’s TV film THE UNLOVED, how she collaborates with directors and other HoDs to build a soundtrack, why certain songs cost more than others, how needle drops happen and what song she is particularly proud of clearing for use in a film…