In 2017, singer-songwriter Jenny Owen Youngs set a goal to write a song about every single episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her then-wife, Kristin Russo, had never watched the show, so the two of them decided to start a podcast about watching Buffy, from the perspective of a newbie and a lifelong fan — and each podcast episode would end with an original composition by Youngs inspired by that episode of the show.
It's a neat experiment overall — a cool format for generative art, and presumably a great way for Youngs to stretch her songwriting muscles. Not every tune is a banger, but that doesn't matter; what matters more is that she'll have ultimately written 144 songs, which is impressive enough. (For "Once More, With Feeling," the duo even wrote a 45-minute full-cast musical about the act of watching the musical episode of Buffy.)
The full collection of songs from Season Six was just released, and while I haven't listened to it all yet, the "Doublemeat Palace" song came up on my Spotify Release Radar. I don't know if this was deliberately released as a single, or if it was just the Spotify algorithm doing its thing. But I shuddered when I saw the title. "Doublemeat Palace" is universally reviled as one of, if not the, worst episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But god dammit … Youngs somehow managed to turn it into a great fucking song.
