9. Yaz, “Only You” (Season 3, Episode 4) / Pink Floyd, unspecified (Season 3, Episode 6)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPpHLK4SHt8

The Ballad(s) of Jim and Kimmy. Along with Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac, and Roxy Music (don’t touch that dial, music fans!), Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet’s synth-soul duo Yaz — that’s Yazoo to us Yanks — were one of The Americans’ go-to artists. They were never employed better than when poor infatuated teenager Kimmy Breland played the group’s gorgeous love song “Only You” to “Jim,” the hipster weed-dealer alter ego Philip employs to gain access to her CIA father’s house. Sweet but never saccharine, it suits the dancing-in-the-moonlight ambience of the scene perfectly.

“Jim” returns the favor a few episodes later, with a truly brilliant non-music cue: Placing headphones on the ears of a very stoned Kimmy, he plays her an unnamed song by Pink Floyd, the mind-expanding beauty of which we’re left to imagine through watching the blissed-out expressions on the face of actor Julia Garner, then 21 and already a formidable talent. The heart of Kimmy and Jim’s relationship was a dark one, and it only got darker when she returned for the final season. But in these two scenes, Kimmy’s need to be acknowledged and understood, Philip’s desire to do right by a teenage girl while failing his own, and the power of music to transport and delight shine through anyway.

Combining three beats I love—The Americans, pop music, and the use of music by TV dramas—I wrote about the best music cues in the show’s history for Vulture.

2. The Young Pope: “Sexy and I Know It” by LMFAO

“Sexy and I Know It” is Paolo Sorrentino’s ambitious, emotional, confrontational series about an autocratic American-born pope in miniature. Granted, using LMFAO to represent your drama about faith, loneliness, power, corruption, and lies is a bit counterintuitive compared to, say, summing up Twin Peaks with a song from the Twin Peaks score. That’s the joke, in part: It’s very stupid, and therefore very funny, to watch the Holy Father dress up for his first address to the College of the Cardinals while Redfoo drawls about wearing a Speedo at the beach so he can work on his ass tan. Girl, look at that body … of Christ?!

But like so much of The Young Pope, there’s a much deeper and more serious meaning beneath the craziness and camp. To wit, the brand of tyrannical, uncompromising religion the pontiff formerly known as Lenny Belardo (Jude Law) embraces depends on craziness and camp. Look at the obscene decadence of his subsequent entrance to the Sistine Chapel, borne on a litter like an emperor of old. Listen to his megalomaniacal speech, demanding that the Church remake itself in his bizarre and imperious image. Watch how he demands his followers demonstrate their obedience by literally kissing his feet. It’s a contrast to the self-aware silliness of “Sexy and I Know It,” yes, but it’s a contrast achieved by taking that song’s boasts as deadly serious claims to superiority. He’s got passion in his pants and he ain’t afraid to show it. Spiritually speaking, anyway.

I wrote about the 10 best music cues on TV this year for Vulture. As is always the case with lists of this nature when I write them, it is objectively right and I shall brook no dissent.