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Every time loop story (and there are many) needs something to signify that a new iteration is in effect. Maybe it’s someone getting spritzed with perfume like in 12 Dates of Christmas or a friendly game of poker in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Cause and Effect.” Groundhog Day, possibly the most famous time loop tale, signified the start in a truly memorable way: with the sing-songy sounds of Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe.”
Netflix’s new series Russian Doll takes a hint from Groundhog Day by timing every one of Natasha Lyonne’s resets to one song. Over and over and over again after every death, Nadia finds herself unexpectedly resurrected and back in her friend’s bathroom, staring into the mirror while the same old party rages on outside and as the same piano ditty winds up. So, what is the song in Russian Doll?
The song is “Gotta Get Up” by legendary singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson.
While “Gotta Get Up” wasn’t one of Nilsson’s modest ’70s radio hits, it is one of the songs most associated with him. That’s probably because it’s the very first track on his most commercially (and possibly critically) successful album, 1971’s Nilsson Schmilsson. Fun fact: that album was nominated for an Album of the Year Grammy in 1973 and one of the tracks, Nilsson’s rearrangement of Badfinger’s “Without You,” would become a major hit for Mariah Carey (!) 20 years later.
Considering Nilsson’s low-key legend status, odds are Russian Doll will be many people’s first exposure to him. Nilsson’s always been a musician’s favorite musician, literally; in 1968, the Beatles cited Nilsson as their absolute favorite American musician, the kind of PR you just can’t buy. John Lennon and Nilsson would become drinking buddies and collaborators in the ’70s. After Lennon’s murder in 1980, Nilsson became an advocate for gun control and diverted all of his attention to advocacy rather than albums. Nilsson died of a major heart attack a decade later in 1994.
Okay, now I’m gonna get into SPOILER territory if you haven’t watched past Episode 3 of Russian Doll. You’ve been warned!
“Gotta Get Up” isn’t the only song tied to a time loop in Russian Doll. At the end of Episode 3, we meet a mystery man who’s also dying all the time. That man, we come to learn in Episode 4, is named Alan (played by Charlie Barnett) and he’s got his own time loop routine. He also wakes up staring at a bathroom mirror, except this mirror is in his own bathroom. The song he hears is not “Gotta Get Up.” It’s actually the third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. The specific version was conducted by Howard Shelley and performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Why these specific songs, though? Listen, I’m not Russian Doll’s music supervisor but the selection seems pretty straightforward, if a bit subtle. Alan’s all about structure, constraint, control. It makes sense that he’d be paired with an elegant piece of classical music, especially a movement that’s more rhythmic (re: routine) than the other one. The third movement of this piano concerto is in the rondo form, which has refrains built into it–kinda like Alan’s time loop predicament.
And while you maybe don’t really hear it in the bluesy and woozy piano and accordion of “Gotta Get Up,” Nilsson was himself a bit of a raging party guy. Dude busted one of his vocal chords while recording an album, and then just… didn’t stop singing. The song itself is about the drunken dash back home from a night of partying because you know you’ve got responsibilities in the a.m. That describes Nadia perfectly, doesn’t it?
