Music often defines a television show. You hear Phantom Planet’s ‘California,’ and you know it’s the opening of The OC, Sex Education had Rod Stewart’s apt ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,’ Euphoria had Beyoncé, and Shrek had Smashmouth. A specific story can become synonymous with a soundtrack, and for The Summer I Turned Pretty, that has been the music of Taylor Swift.

As Abby Monteil writes in Marie Claire, Swift’s music may as well have been cast as a main character in TSITP for all it adds to the story, and it’s the show’s music supervisor, Melyssa Hardwick, who is responsible for many of these key musical moments. Hardwick has been working with series creator and author Jenny Han since TSITP first started, serving as Amazon Studios’s former head of music before taking over as music supervisor for season three.

Hardwick told Marie Claire that she feels like “Taylor is the soundtrack of girlhood at the end of the day, and Jenny writes about girlhood.” Swift has been there for girls at every stage of life, creating music that can help them understand what they’re going through. Whether that’s being there for your friend after she lost her first love at ‘Fifteen’ to doing it “with a broken heart,” like Swift did during The Eras Tour and the release of The Tortured Poets Department.

Fans know the lore behind Swift’s music, and can automatically tie those girlhood links to TSITP when they drop the tracks into specific scenes. Some say that Swift’s songs speak from Belly’s heart, and the reason there were no Swift tracks in episodes two to five in season three was because she wasn’t in touch with her emotions.

Song choices have an impact on Swift, too. Billboard reported that after her song ‘Dress’ was played during that sex scene with Conrad and Belly, it saw gains of 666 per cent.

Hardwich wanted to fulfil all of Han’s musical dreams, though. In the spot of Swift’s ‘Out of the Woods’ in the script, Han had written, “Song that will change your life.” Hardwick says she was like, “‘What song is this going to be?’ And Jenny texted me, ‘I think I wanna try ‘Out of the Woods.’ After we edited it, we were like, ‘There’s no other song.’”

Hardwick also told Marie Claire that they use decoys for all the Swift songs until the episodes actually air, to avoid leaks. “I did have to find decoy songs for all 11 of the Taylor uses this season, but there was no backup song,” she said.

Hardwick goes on to talk about both Han and her are “super protective” over the musical involvement of Swift, over the process and the relationship. She said: “If Taylor ever wants to talk about the process, we’ll totally let her do it. I’m completely in awe that we get to use as much music as we do, and she trusts us. I was like, ‘You guys can say no to us if you want to.’” 

But she thinks Swift’s role in the show is “huge.” Hardwick added how Swift’s team have “been incredible partners with us, because they hadn’t seen the show when they gave us the first songs in the first season. Jenny says this, and I will completely back it up: Taylor really bets on women, and she also bet on Jenny and me. One thing I see with Jenny and with Taylor is that they really care about their fans. They care about the experience. They care about what they’re going through.” 

This was why Han wanted Swift in the first place, Hardwick explained, because she had written the books to Fearless. 

I count that 30 Swift songs have been used in TSITP in total since season one, the first being ‘This Love (Taylor’s Version),’ which appeared in the teaser trailer, up until the last feature being ‘Dress.’

What sort of numbers are we talking about to secure all these huge Swift tracks, then? Hardwick let on about how much it cost to curate the soundtrack, but sadly, “it’s definitely the redacted number dollar question.” She added: “I can say it was a conversation from the beginning, and we had a very healthy budget. But even if you give someone a healthy budget and they’re not good creatively, it’s not gonna have the impact that Jenny was able to have. She has her finger on the pulse of pop culture. This is the kind of person you wanna give money to and let them run. I can’t obviously give numbers, but we do pay for every song. We clear every song.”

All I’m guessing is that it’s got to be in the six-zeroes category, Swift is a businesswoman after all.