Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

[KrayZ33]

Just realized how well the lyrics from the song "Little Stranger" during the kiss-scene in episode 4 fits the characters featured as well as their background story (or even the future they have ahead of them). Didn't even notice it at first.

Aww shit man... music has to be utilized like this more often in shows. Some shows do, for sure, Call of the Night (just to name a recent one) had good music choice as well fitting the plot, characters and atmosphere! It's not like this never happens... but it always hits hard and remains memorable when done right.

I wonder however, how do studios, or anyone in general, find music that fit characters or scene in a somewhat unlikely fashion like that one?
Honest question because I just can't even understand where you begin if it's not specifically written for the show or scene.
Obviously not everything is a 100% match, but you can clearly connect some dots and lines here and match it up to Lucy's and to some degree David's backstory as well (and what happened between them).

Do you think this is done by sheer luck and people ask around who knows a song that would somewhat fit?
Is there a way to filter the topics of songs in some database? I don't believe the interpret is a well known musician around the world, so it's not like the song is in everyones head... or probably not even in anyone's.
Obviously, song lyrics are often written to be broad and unspecific so you are often able to apply the lyrics to a vast amount of different situations and all, it's not any different here....but...I just wonder, how is the selection done, at what point in the production is the decision made for example?
Where does the idea come from?
When someone would ask me about "what kind of music or song should we play during this scene" I would at most be able to say something about the type of music, never ever would I come up with a specific song unless it's a lucky match.
Is this how they do it? How would you start?

Sometimes I dabble in cutting and editing gameplay videos and yeah.. I have a specific song in my head and adjust the video around that, but that's exactly the other way around. Which is, I don't think, how they do it in movies.

[Ryllharu]

There are some subtitled interviews with Kajiura Yuki about her process. Some of the key takeaway is that she writes about 10 times as many compositions as the number of songs she's published, she listens to a ton of music herself from a lot of highly varied sources, and she starts with the images/film cuts she's given and comes up with something that "fits."

Kanno Youko subbed interviews are much harder to find, at least back then for Cowboy Bebop, she just wtote an insane amount of songs, and then the sound direction and director used what they think fits, and while she din't always agree with their choices for particular scenes, she wasn't particularly upset either.

Edgerunners...it is less clear on. Akira Yamaoka is credited for the music, but a lot of it is lifted right from the game which is credited largely to Marcin Przybyłowicz, P.T. Adamczyk, and Paul Leonard-Morgan. They're cited in some game interviews about the music as just listening to a ton of it again.

So...loads and loads of research.

[DarthEnderX]

Isn't all the music in this show from the game's radio stations anyway?

[KrayZ33]

Isn't all the music in this show from the game's radio stations anyway?

Well, in that specific case it wasn't.
'Little Stranger' is from 2014 and I believe it wasn't included in the game. Neither Radio nor anywhere else... I could be wrong though.

That's exactly what is so strange for me, because the music wasn't written for the show.
It's like someone went over to direction and said "You know, I like this song that I listen to regulary, and it has fitting lyrics as well"

So since that seems rather silly I thought that there is some kind of online database or something that I just don't know about that has music already sorted with keywords that describe the songs lyrics or whatever.