The Hulu series Paradise can accurately be described as a climate-change cautionary tale, or a character-driven puzzle-box show, or a Truman Show–esque drama rife with twists. But let’s be serious about what Paradise actually is: a piece of Hulu-sponsored propaganda designed to brainwash viewers into believing that several cheesy ’80s pop songs should be taken seriously.
One of the running themes in Paradise’s just-wrapped first season is that President Cal Bradford, played by James Marsden as a well-meaning seat-warmer of a leader, has terrible taste in music that he insists on jamming into the earholes of his teenage son, Jeremy. Cal’s nostalgia for the most basic-ass hits of the ’80s and early ’90s is somewhat understandable: In a world where most of Earth’s population seemingly got eliminated in a cavalcade of arctic volcanos, tsunamis, and nuclear attacks, and the remaining survivors live in a simulated version of normalcy, Cal longs for the relative simplicity of his youth. And apparently, in his youth, Cal really, really liked hair metal, which is why songs like “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” by Poison, “Here I Go Again,” by Whitesnake, “More Than Words,” by Extreme, and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” by Guns N’ Roses pop up throughout the season alongside ’80s-night favorites like “Eye of the Tiger,” “We Built This City,” “I Think We’re Alone Now,” and “Another Day in Paradise,” which appears in the first and last episodes of the season. (It seems criminal that Paradise has yet to feature “Paradise City,” by the aforementioned Guns N’ Roses, which I am 100 percent certain Cal used to air-drum to in high school. Maybe next season.)
It would be one thing if these sonic blasts from the Reagan-Bush years were sprinkled throughout the episodes as amusing callbacks to the America that’s been lost; as silly as some of these tracks are, they can take on unexpected poignancy in certain contexts. But instead of allowing the audience to consider the various shades of emotional response one can have to a goofy pop song, Paradise forces the issue by shoehorning overwrought covers of several of them into the episodes, a move in keeping with the show’s on-the-nose, sometimes corny approach to storytelling. With its heightened dramas, overdone Die Hard references, and ridiculous plot turns, Paradise is pretty preposterous yet asks us to consider it as a sophisticated prestige drama. The covers work in a similar fashion: Paradise has to know that these songs are mostly enjoyed ironically at this point, but it insists that we listen to them sincerely by splashing slower, heavier versions into the narrative.
Using these covers is both a misguided choice and one of the things I appreciate most about Paradise. A drama this intense needs some comic relief, and these songs serve it up even if that’s not what they’re intended to do. That said, some of these needle drops are more ludicrous than others, so in their honor, let’s take one more listen to the highlights of season one’s mixtape.
Note: Spoilers for all of season one lie ahead.
“We Built This City”
Episode 2, “Sinatra”
Original by Starship
Paradise cover by Aron Wright and Jill Andrews
To this episode’s credit, it acknowledges that “We Built This City” is a recognizably ridiculous song: “Maybe it’s not so bad that the world ended,” says Xavier’s daughter Presley when Jeremy makes her listen to it on a CD in the library. Including it could have worked as a nice, tongue-in-cheek detail, since this entire episode is literally about how the city of Paradise was built — it was on rocks, but not roll — if only Paradise weren’t so damn committed to making us feel things. It’s that commitment that leads a slower, more melodramatic version of “We Built This City” to show up a few minutes later, during a montage that includes a flashback to Sinatra’s now-deceased child asking if he’ll go to heaven and Jeremy and Presley revisiting the entrance to Paradise.
I understand that this cover is supposed to convey the tragedy and trauma underlying this new version of reality. But here’s the problem: The singers of this version of “We Built This City,” like everyone who has ever sung “We Built This City,” eventually have to say the phrase “knee-deep in the hoopla.” If there is one thing I have known my entire life, it’s that it is impossible to say the words “knee-deep in the hoopla” without laughing. But Aron Wright and Jill Andrews, God bless them, sing it with the kind of gravity normally reserved for “Ave Maria,” which caused me to do a spit take and dissolve into giggles for the remainder of this episode. The lesson is this: “We Built This City” should never, ever be taken seriously.
“I Think We’re Alone Now”
Episode 3, “The Architect of Social Well-Being”
’80s version by Tiffany
Paradise cover by Hidden Citizens
This Tiffany number, itself a cover of a ’60s hit for Tommy James and the Shondells, appears in its ’80s form during a fantasy sequence where Nicole, a Secret Service agent as well as the late Cal’s secret lover, remembers an intimate moment between the two of them when Cal called it their song. Cal! Why are you, an adult man, forcing the woman you supposedly adore to think of you every time she hears this shopping-mall version of a love song? Anyway, the fantasy of Cal gets completely ruined when Nicole’s brain imagines him bleeding to death all over her. Is this the song’s fault? I mean, yeah, probably.
“I Think We’re Alone Now” resurfaces later in the episode, this time as performed much more seductively by Hidden Citizens, when Xavier and Paradise’s resident psychotherapist Gabriela hook up and eventually take that action to the shower. As we learn in a subsequent episode, Xavier and Gabriela are not alone at all, actually — Sinatra is observing their shower sex via a hidden camera. While I appreciate how later plot developments add layers to this song choice, by the time the vocal climactically wails “we’re alone!” as the episode ends, I was trying to get away into the night just so I wouldn’t have to hear it anymore.
“Every Rose Has Its Thorn”
Episode 4, “Agent Billy Pace”
Original by Poison
Paradise cover by Wendy Wang
We don’t actually hear the original Poison version of this song, either because Paradise didn’t want to pay for the rights or because it didn’t seem necessary, which it doesn’t. I can believe Jeremy might want to play this 1988 power ballad in his dad’s honor, and the scene of him and his band strumming it out at the carnival is organic and diegetic enough to work.
But the song resurfaces in the clumsiest of ways at the end of the episode, with a whispery cover by Wendy Wang providing the backdrop to the moment when Billy gets poisoned to death by Jane, who’s revealed to be working undercover for Sinatra. That’s right: The soundtrack to a poisoning scene is a song originally performed by Poison. So, if you’re following here, the rose that was the love between Billy and Jane has thorns, and those thorns are the fact that Jane just murdered him. It’s really meaningful when you think about it … just kidding, it’s actually pretty dumb. But I sort of respect how dumb it is.
“Eye of the Tiger”
Episode 5, “In the Palaces of Crowned Kings”
Original by Survivor
Paradise cover by Tommee Profitt feat. FJØRA
This electronically charged version of the Survivor song from Rocky III is so ominous, it’s remarkable it doesn’t have a nervous breakdown before it can finish playing. The song gets dropped into an intense scene that tracks the first step in Xavier’s attempt to overthrow Sinatra, with his neighbor taking over the Paradise controls long enough to post the message “They’re lying to you” in the fake sky. Using a heightened version of a work of such extreme Jazzercise art — and an Academy Award–nominated one, to boot — is ridiculous on its face and completely undermines the intensity the show is trying to capture. Yeah, I know the song is a callback to Cal’s desire to watch Rocky III with Jeremy. I also know that the showdown between Xavier and Sinatra is supposed to be as filled with anger as the one between Rocky and Clubber Lang. And, sure, the word “eye” in the song’s title can also signify the eye that’s watching everyone, always, in the bunker’s faux stratosphere. The problem is that I could not stop laughing while watching this, and I don’t think that’s what Paradise was going for here.
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”
Episode 6, “You Asked for Miracles”
Paradise cover by RAIGN
This is probably the best cover song used in Paradise so far, for three simple and obvious reasons: (1) It doesn’t suck. (2) Guns N’ Roses is awesome. (3) This song was written by Bob Dylan. The GNR version makes a brief appearance early in the episode, when Jeremy is listening to it on his headphones at the library, part of his ritualistic revisitation of his dad’s favorite hits. The callback version — another cover of a cover — overlays the final sequence in the episode, which consists of a flashback to Xavier saying good-bye to his wife Teri on earth, not knowing it will be the last time he sees her, and the present-day revelation by Sinatra that Teri may still be alive.
Perhaps it’s because we’re all accustomed to hearing different takes on “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” but the Raign needle drop is the least jarring and most effective of Paradise’s covers. This version is understated and plays perfectly into the poignancy behind the possibility that Teri might be among the living and not in the afterlife. Honestly, no real notes.
“Another Day in Paradise”
Episodes 1 (“Wildcat is Down”) and 8 (“The Man Who Kept the Secrets”)
Original by Phil Collins
Paradise covers by JOYNER and Siddhartha Khosla
It’s understandable why showrunner Dan Fogelman used this song to bookend Paradise’s debut season. The Phil Collins hit is, lyrically, a warning about the dangers of turning a blind eye to the poor, unhoused, and otherwise suffering in society. A cover by JOYNER plays in episode one beneath imagery of Xavier jogging through town, a place called Paradise (I know, I know), as it’s first revealed to be built under a dome inside a Colorado mountain. This sunny idyllic community is really just a construct, one created to house the survivors who were determined to be most necessary to save. (Naturally, many of those “essential workers” are billionaires.) The economic and class disparity Collins first sang about is embedded in the whole concept of how Paradise, the place and the show, works.
When the song resurfaces in the finale, this time in a piano-based version by series composer Siddhartha Khosla, who also handled the score for Fogelman’s This Is Us, it’s when President Bradford’s murderer, who goes undercover as a librarian named Trent, has finished explaining his motives to Xavier. Trent, who once attempted to assassinate Bradford back upstairs on earth, finally finds confirmation that Bradford and his administration have lied about the lack of survivors on earth. He also tells Xavier about how this megabunker was built on the ashes of blue-collar workers and may contain harmful toxins. Again, we are learning that Paradise is ultimately telling a story about the powerful and comfortable holding on to power and comfort at the expense of everyone else, the same points alluded to in Collins’s song.
In short, this one makes sense narratively. But Paradise being Paradise, this selection — “Another Day in Paradise” describing a city called Paradise?? — is about as subtle as, well, a poisoning scene set to a Poison song.