BONUS: The Gilmore Girls Will Change Your Life

Guest Writer Elisabeth Donnelly On the Music of Stars Hollow

Welcome to another Gilmore Women bonus newsletter (for paid subscribers)! Thank you so much for your support of this newsletter — it means the world to us that we have found such a community here to give the careful attention to this show that we think it deserves.

Today, we have our second-ever guest essay from writer Elisabeth Donnelly, whose work we have admired since we first read her extremely convincing piece “Why Gilmore Girls Was Secretly a Twin Peaks Tribute Show” back when Flavorwire existed in 2014 and promptly decided we wanted to know all of her opinions on the pop culture we know and love.

Her analysis of the music on Gilmore Girls is a love letter to quiet girls reading at lunch while listening to the Shins, to self-styled outsiders soaking in the disaffection of ’70s punk, to children of the ’80s bopping to the Bangles, and to anyone who knows that while Garden State may have made us embarrassed about admitting it, sometimes music does actually change your life.

If you are getting this issue, you’re already a paid subscriber. But a Gilmore Women subscription also makes a delightful gift, circumvents supply-chain issues, and avoids putting additional cash into the coffers of the first corporation you thought about as soon as you read the word “corporation.” Pass this one on like your favorite mix CD. — Maggie & Megan

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The girl who introduced us to the Shins is not Natalie Portman.

The Gilmore Girls Will Change Your Life

by Elisabeth Donnelly

The first time I heard the Shins — a band whose grave will read “The Shins Will Change Your Life,” as uttered by original pixie dream girl Natalie Portman in Garden State — Rory Gilmore was sitting down for a loner’s lunch at Chilton, reading Eudora Welty’s short stories, her Discman blaring 2001’s “Know Your Onion”: “Shut out/pimpled and angry/I quietly tied all my guts in a knot …”

Gilmore Girls had an idiosyncratic approach to music, curating a soundtrack so specific and rooted in character that it served as an instant guide to the characters of Stars Hollow, and how their cultural passions reflected who they were. This was unusual for teen shows at the time, which would often default to musical choices showcasing the hot band of the month, a visual multi-level marketing scheme perfected by The OC.