Nearly a month after “Off Campus” launched on Prime Video, the buzzy soundtrack is still permeating the cultural zeitgeist, with a video of star Belmont Cameli dancing to The Kid Laroi’s “Girls” — a moment pulled straight from the YA series — at this weekend’s Los Angeles concert making the rounds on social media.
It’s especially surreal for music supervisors Amanda Krieg Thomas and Anna Romanoff, who recalled Cameli gravitating toward the song out of several options during Episode 4’s drunk Shakespeare scene, in which Cameli’s Garrett Graham is tasked with giving a lap dance to Kendall (Karis Cameron) during a performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“We wanted to feel like he has ownership of it, and he’s doing it on stage, and it looks great, and he feels great … It made its way through into post-production and through the process, and just stayed in there,” Krieg Thomas told TheWrap of “Girls.”
Cameli’s dance is just one of the viral music-based moments that have caught wind from the show. Jennifer Lopez’s “On the Floor” — which plays in the first meeting between Allie (Mika Abdalla) and Dean (Stephen Kalyn) — inspired a visit from Lopez herself to Abdalla that was shared on social media. And artists like Warrant, Beaches, Vienna Vienna and G Flip are all embracing their song’s role in the YA sensation, with Romanoff noting “it seems like everyone’s just very excited to like keep the party going.”
As they craft the soundtrack, it’s impossible for Krieg Thomas and Romanoff to know what moments might be the ones that go viral, but they knew the songs were set up for success. “The songs themselves are so good, the way they are playing against pictures are so good, the way they’re interacting with story are so featured that they’re really impossible to miss,” Romanoff said. “This is one of those rare show … every single spot was my favorite when I was working on it.”
Below, the music supervisors unpack the season’s key musical moments, from “Cherry Pie” to “Bed on Fire.” The duo declined to discuss any teases for the Allie and Dean-centered Season 2, which is currently in production. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
All the Songs in 'Off Campus' Season 1
TheWrap: How much does the show having a younger and more social media present demo influence what tracks you choose?
Krieg Thomas: We are guided first and foremost by the story and the scenes … I just try to pay attention .. whether that’s what people are talking about on Instagram, what’s on Spotify … it’s our job to pay attention to what the conversations are, and talk to people, and be aware of what people are saying about this person, who’s coming up and what we should be paying attention to. We do want the show to feel current.
Romanoff: I do think one of the opportunities in a show like this — because it has this online audience that is picking apart everything — is to also be able to put on artists that we’ve been fans of for such for such a long time that we know the talent and the quality of songwriting and the quality of music is there. All of these artists have fans already … but it’s really fun when we do get to take artists that we love … [and] put them out, so that the world of the internet can find them. There were times when I’d be pitching songs where I’d be like, I do love the idea of this artist for this show, and every time we’re going back to a scene that feels remotely in their pocket, I’d make sure to do sweeps of their discography to be, is there the right song that can go here?
It was definitely the case for G Flip’s “Bed on Fire.” Why was that one the best choice and what does it mean to have such an impact on artists like this?
Romanoff: I mean, they set the bed on fire. What else can you say? That’s all Hannah and Garrett.
Krieg Thomas: We’ve both been a fan of theirs for a long time … and so really early on, we were able to get a copy get the Dreamwriter album, and just were like, “This is incredible” … so we pitched their music — songs from that album — many, many times, lots of songs, lots of spots.
Romanoff: We did play around with the tone for that one, because there’s like all the sexy stuff, but then you have her baking lasagna and her at the rink, and there’s like a good mix of … it’s sexy, it’s domestic, it’s fun, it’s friendship — it’s like all of these different things. That was a specific tone to fit, and when you lined up “Bed on Fire,” that one just works really well … in all the different ways.
Krieg Thomas: It was also a long montage — it’s long in its current iteration. It was long in early cuts, so any song there needed to have enough changes in dynamics … so you never got bored listening to the song, while you were watching it.
Was that J. Lo moment always in the script or did you have any other songs in mind for that first moment for Allie and Dean?
Romanoff: Always in the script. That was the brilliant writers.
Krieg Thomas: They knew what they were doing, and we knew we had to get a “yes.”
Did you have any other J. Lo songs beyond “On the Floor” for that moment?
Romanoff: No, I think it was always “On the Floor.” I mean, it’s such a good one.
Another scene that’s been going around is Hannah’s karaoke of “Cherry Pie” after seeing Garrett hook up to that song. What made you land on that song for this moment?
Krieg Thomas: That was tricky, and that song was not in the script. Much credit just has to go to the brilliant writers, and Louisa [Levy] and Gina [Fattore] for making musical storytelling so key to the fabric of the show — it was always by design, to my memory, that the song that was playing when Garrett was hooking up was going to be the song that returned for karaoke. It was a really hard spot — I think that we sent a few different rounds because it needed to feel like something Garrett would put on for a hookup, and lyrically make sense for that. But then it also needed to serve this purpose of being a karaoke song that Hannah could sing that would be fun still for her to sing and living in Garrett’s classic rock playlist land. You needed to find something that could still really be playful and be this sort of push and pull moment, as for the performance, and as Garrett’s watching her, and lyrically speak to, in some kind of way, this shifting dynamic between the two of them … and something that Ella could sing, and the performance itself would be really interesting.
Romanoff: The whole time you’re also building the arc of Hannah as a musician and as a musical person, and the idea that she could take this classic rock song, but do these little riffs — there’s a lot of stuff that’s built in, which is so much credit to our music producer, Alana Da Fonseca … her and Ella worked on it [and] they found those spots to make it be … it’s them — it’s the couple of Hannah and Garrett. It’s flirty, it’s fun, but it’s also showing Hannah’s music skills evolving from composer to performer, which is where she ends up. We did want to showcase that — we haven’t really seen her perform in public yet, but she totally can do it, and look, how everyone freaks out when she does.
You had a real partnership with Remi Wolf. How did that come together?
Krieg Thomas: We came on extremely early and they knew that they wanted a stunt artist in Episode 1 — that was a very big part of the conversation. We had a lot of conversations of we’re shooting in 2025 or something that’s going to air in 2026 — we want to be current, we want to be ahead even, and who can be that type of artist, and who has the right music — the songs need to feel like a block party, it needs to feel party appropriate, needs to be up, it needs to really get the block party going, and get the cast going, get everybody going, and Remi was a name that was very early in our conversations.
Romanoff: From the moment I read the script — even before we met on this project, Remi was the first one that came to mind. We went to the same college, so I think for me I was like, “Oh, college block party, for sure Remi.” She just has that live show energy — we wanted someone that would really look dynamic on screen and performing, and I remember circulating some videos of her performing that we just pulled from YouTube early on, and everyone was like, “Oh, she does the kick, she does so much running around stage” that’s really fun to work with.
The show also includes several original tracks, including “Yellow Haze.” What went into crafting something that doesn’t quite hit?
Krieg Thomas: For “Yellow Haze,” it was like we need this song that you’re going to hear in several iterations throughout the course of this show, but that … gets ultimately shelved for Hannah’s arc, and also needed to have a joke that Allie could comment on.
Romanoff: She says “you mean like pee?” — that specific joke wasn’t scripted, but that beat was always there, so we knew there had to be something in the lyrics that could play to like that beat for sure.
Krieg Thomas: The goal was never to write a bad song — the goal was always to write a song … that could evolve, because you hear it at first as an instrumental by a classical music major, then you hear what a singer-songwriter, Justin, adds to it, and then you hear this version. It needed to evolve and be compelling in every evolution, but it also never needed to be bad — the goal was a good song that was just not Hannah, it just never felt like Hannah. We ended up doing like the longer version for the for the big performance of it, so the first iterations were shorter, but it was very quickly like, “oh my gosh, what if it’s yellow haze, and the joke is pee,” and everyone was like, “yes, the joke is pee.”
“Off Campus” Season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.
