The following contains spoilers for the second season of Netflix’s Sex Education
Netflix’s Sex Education is charming for the many weird choices it makes. It’s (in)famous for its anachronistic, Americanized visual style despite its very British accents. It apes high school comedies of the past, and everything from the costumes to the production design feels strangely out-of-place, but not enough to distract from the stories of the show’s clueless, sex-obsessed teens. This extends to the music too which rarely borrows from current hits and more often cycles through ‘80s chart-toppers. But its most surreal needle drop comes late in the newest season: sex therapist Dr. Jean Milburn is dumped by her serial monogamist boyfriend for being, well, a bad monogamist. As she leaves the room to mourn her abruptly ended relationship, a song plays. A flurry of emotions wash over me: surprise, pain, but mostly confusion. Why this of all songs?
The offending track is “Mystery of Love” by Sufjan Stevens. If you recall, “Mystery of Love” was one of three songs Stevens contributed to the soundtrack for Call Me By Your Name. This song in particular accompanies the beginning of the end for Elio and Oliver and their ephemeral relationship. As they revel in the short time they have together alone, they run up a hill and their screams of joy are drowned out by a cascading waterfall. It’s a bittersweet moment. Stevens’s lyrics encapsulate an entire passionate relationship with euphoria and premature mourning entangled.
So why is this playing in Sex Education? If you’re going to use “Mystery of Love,” you need to know that it comes with heavily loaded context. It’s practically impossible to separate the song from the film from which it originates. You can’t just throw the song in there! And it’s definitely not an “I just got dumped” song. Surely, the more appropriate choice for this scene from the Call Me By Your Name soundtrack is “Visions of Gideon,” the heart-crushing song about lost love that plays over the film’s credits. What is even more egregious is that this song doesn’t just play over Gillian Anderson crying like she’s Timothée Chalamet sitting in front of a fireplace. It plays over a series of completely unrelated events. Frankly, and I don’t say this lightly, how dare anyone turn “Mystery of Love” into a montage song…
Sex Education isn’t the first offender. Last year, Twitter was sent into a frenzy when the song appeared in the second season of Big Little Lies; Shailene Woodley’s Jane frolics alongside the Monterey sea in slow-motion while she listens to the wistful sounds of Sufjan Stevens through headphones. Why does she have Sufjan Stevens—an artist whose tempo is very much not fit for jogging to—on her running playlist? Does Call Me By Your Name exist in the Big Little Lies universe?
I’m not just arguing that “Mystery of Love” should never be played over anything that isn’t Call Me By Your Name ever again because it’s misused. I’m vehemently against the cursed needle drop for the sake of emotional stability. Stevens’s soft vocals and joyful guitar trigger a Pavlovian response of weeping within anyone (namely, me) who has lingering memories of Luca Guadagnino’s summery romance. How am I supposed to live my life as normal if at any point, some TV show is going to suddenly spring that song on me—that beautiful, tear-inducing, soul-destroying song. If I’m going to cry during “Mystery of Love,” it’s going to be on my terms when I watch the movie again for the 40th time, or play it in my car to have a good cry in peace.
This is my plea to music supervisors everywhere: please stop playing “Mystery of Love!” I get it. It’s a good song. It’s an Oscar-nominated song, in fact. But your choices have consequences. Like Elio’s rendezvous with a peach, this is getting out of control.