The Best Musical Moments from 'Orange Is the New Black' Season 2
Orange Is the New Black proved this season that it embraces schlocky music wholeheartedly and believes their characters do as well, frequently having them perform or sing along.
.Orange Is the New Black proves this season that it embraces schlocky music wholeheartedly and believes their characters do as well, frequently having them perform or sing along.
The show—which is ostensibly a comedy, if you ask the Emmys—uses music throughout the season for intentionally humorous moments. Morello sobs in her car to the love theme from Footloose; new inmate Soso demonstrates her love of '90s female singer songwriters. The best OITNB music moments feature old, somewhat stale songs, that make you wonder whether or not the people responsible for the show have had contact with the outside world for years. But that's sort of the point. It's isolated: just like the inmates of Litchfield.
So, for those people who have already binge-watched out there, we've collected the series' best music moments from season two.
"Beautiful"
Episode: "Looks Blue, Tastes Red"
Young Taystee—then Tasha—performs Christina Aguilera's hit for prospective parents, before another girl interrupts her, and Taystee proceeds to tell the girl to fuck off. It's Taystee at her finest: Confident, talented, and brash.
"Almost Paradise"
Episode: "A Whole Other Whole"
Something makes perfect sense about the fact that Morello, in her heartbreak over her (not really) fiancée Christopher, would turn to the ballad that is Ann Wilson and Mike Reno's "Love Theme from Footloose." Her devastated singalong alone in the van is equal turns silly and creepy once we actually know what her relationship to Christopher is.
"Death to My Enemies"
Episode: "Comic Sans"
In a flashback, Black Cindy plays cool big sister to the girl who is really her daughter, by rapping along with 50 Cent's "Death to My Enemies." It's not exactly an appropriate song to be singing with a young girl, highlighting Black Cindy's skewed relationship to her own child.
"Come On Up to the House"
Episode: "40 OZ of Furlough"
This is one of the few moments on this list that doesn't involve a character singing along, but Tom Waits' song has a perfect lyric for the sequence in which Piper leaves her brother's wedding/grandmother's funeral, goes to Red's closed-down market, and buys a 40. Waits growls: "The world is not my home/ I'm just a passin thru." That's exactly what Piper is doing as she takes her furlough.
"Bitch" and "Stay"
Episode: "It Was The Change"
When a storm compromises the power of Litchfield, all the residents are forced to sleep over in the cafeteria. Brook Soso, despite the fact that she seems to be annoying everyone, all the time gets the other inmates to join in a sing along. Her tastes, somewhat predictably, are along the Lilith Fair lines, as she leads choruses of Meredith Brooks' "Bitch" and Lisa Loeb's "Stay."
"Breakfast at Tiffany's"
Episode: "We Have Manners. We're Polite."
Continuing the theme of using '90s one-hit wonders—BuzzFeed film critic Alison Willmore praised the show's "judicious" use of them on Twitter—Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" scores this deeply sad, awkward moment. Just after he tells Morello that Rosa is going to die, CO Ford turns on the radio and begins singing along as Morello gives him a horrified look. This is a supremely stupid song, and Ford is being supremely stupid.
"(Don't Fear) The Reaper"
Episode: "We Have Manners. We're Polite."
Orange takes a song probably best known these days for its role in the "cowbell" SNL sketch and then gives it the last moment of the season in which Rosa makes her getaway, once again turning into the passionate woman she was in her youth, before she dies.
There's something absurd about the fact that this song is the one that just happens to be on the radio as Rosa takes her final drive, and it's almost a little too fitting. On the other hand, it also turns the episode's finale into a rather unforgettable moment.