Find out how we got the Regency-style pop songs on “Bridgerton,” plus other stories about the music of Shondaland

It's not a Shondaland series without an iconic needle drop.

Shonda Rhimes' longtime producing partner Betsy Beers has had a hand in notable musical moments in shows from the eponymous creator since Grey's Anatomy started it all 20 years ago. Music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas and Beers are to thank for everything from the devastating "Chasing Cars" scenes in Grey's to the beloved string covers of pop hits in Bridgerton.

Below, Beers looks back on the Shondaland musical canon.

Grey's Anatomy's unofficial theme song

When many fans think of Grey's Anatomy, The Fray's "How To Save A Life" immediately starts playing in their heads. The song's name was the episode title for Patrick Dempsey’s heartbreaking exit and was included in the notorious musical episode, but its first appearance on the show was surprisingly less remarkable.

“If you look back at the placement, it’s not a massively flashy placement in my memory,” Beers says. The song is first heard in season 2, episode 21, titled "Superstition," over a montage of Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) helping an anxious patient, Richard Weber (James Pickens Jr.) and Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) in another OR, and Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) getting help for a crashing patient.

Related: Shonda Rhimes dishes on her best episodes, biggest battles, and the spinoff ideas that never happened

“Chasing Cars” reprise

If there's one song that's just as associated with Grey's as "How to Save a Life," it's "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol. Beers thought the song "sounded like a heartbeat," making it the perfect accompaniment to the tragic death of Denny Duquette’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) in season 2.

The track made a reprisal nine seasons later as the background to another gut-wrenching loss, albeit with a twist. Sleeping At Last’s cover of "Chasing Cars" played over Derek Shepherd's death in season 11, but it was a last-minute addition. Rhimes found the cover, and when she played it for Beers, Beers said she "started to cry."

"We both looked at each other and she was like, 'It’s the day we’re airing the show, but this is so great,'" Beers recalls. Although the band members of Sleeping At Last were on an airplane and virtually unreachable, and they had one day to make it happen, happen it did.

Olivia and Fitz’s theme song

Every couple has a song, and for Scandal's Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn), it's "The Light" by The Album Leaf. The track "is absolutely the thing out of the show that you actually recognize," Beer says. "The Album Leaf theme was one of the most brilliant uses and cool ways to repeat a piece of source, but also fully have it identifiable with the main love story of a show."

Related: Scandal stars Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn revisit their favorite Olitz moments

The story of those beloved Bridgerton string covers

If you love hearing classical covers of pop songs like “thank u, next” or “Blank Space” on Bridgerton, you have Beers to thank. “I’m very proud of that contribution, because once we actually started playing contemporary music with the Vitamin String Quartet, all of a sudden everything fell into place,” she says.

Beers explains that when the team was building out the world of Bridgerton, they wanted to find ways to make Regency-period London “subconsciously feel contemporary.” While some aspects, like costumes, had to remain of the era, music gave them room to play. “There’s something about these little hints where you will relax and you’ll be able to identify with things much more intensively because these things are in it,” Beers says.

A fan of Mexican duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, who are known for their rock music, Beers knew they supported themselves by playing flamenco versions of songs they loved at nice dinners and resorts. “They’d be playing like 'Stairway To Heaven,' but it sounded like a nice song being played on guitars,” she recalls. “They started putting out albums, and I love the albums and thought, what if we actually took contemporary songs and we just made them sound like they were Regency?” Thankfully, Patsavas knew the Vitamin String Quartet, leading to the pop-Regency mashups that the citizens of the ton could dance to. 

Beers also loves the show's main theme song by Kris Bowers. "One of the most iconic things about Bridgerton is Kris Bowers' theme song," she says of the composer, who also worked on Shondaland projects Queen Charlotte and For the People. ”The music he writes is poppy, but also elegant and symphonic and very classic."

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Setting the tone for murder

One IAMX song placed in the How To Get Away With Murder series premiere immediately showed us what Annalise Keating's (Viola Davis) world would be like. Beers looks at the placement of "They Come With Knives" as a great way for the legal thriller to set its high-octane, life-and-death tone. "Number one, it announced to everybody that this tone was entirely different than anything else we had ever done, and the style of the music was something [creator] Pete Nowalk really loved," she says. "It’s a really haunting, creepy, amazing piece of music to usher you out of this pilot."

Related: The White House turns into a Clue board in a script page from The Residence

Prepare to enter The Residence

Beers believes the latest Shondaland series, The Residence (which premiered in March), will add to the production company's musical legacy. Calling Mark Mothersbaugh’s score "a whole situation," Beers thinks it's something that will stay with viewers: "There are ear worms in there that will make you crazy in the best way."

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