9. Interview With the Vampire

“Home Is Where You’re Happy” by Charles Manson

“Look, Charlie Manson wrote a couple of beautiful songs. Still, he was Charlie Manson.” Controversial, Daniel Molloy! The conductor of this vampire drama’s titular interview, played by Eric Bogosian, has very little patience for the bloodsucker in question, Louis de Pointe du Lac, and even less for Louis’s psychotic, pubescent protégé, the teenage vampire Claudia. It’s her Molloy compares to Manson, the cult leader who defined the death of the Age of Aquarius … and much to my everlasting surprise, it’s Manson who soundtracks the end of this episode. Molloy is right: Manson could be a talented songwriter in very limited doses, as his buoyant ode to personal freedom, “Home Is Where You’re Happy,” makes clear. It’s just hard to hear that happiness when you recall the fate of Sharon Tate, which is what makes the song a strong choice for the soundtrack of a show about magnetic mass murderers, even when they’re of the supernatural variety.

I wrote about ten of the best uses of popular music on TV this year for Vulture.