Thanks To ‘Euphoria’, Labrinth Is Quietly Becoming The Biggest Name In Pop

There are few television scores that are as evocative and recognisable as edgy teen-drama Euphoria.

We’ve been trained like little dogs to think of the show as soon as we hear any snippet of its music anywhere on social media — and that’s because, simply, there is no other music quite like it right now. It’s dark, glitchy, lo-fi, minimalistic — in other words, perfectly crafted to glow alongside the lives of the troubled teenagers on the show.

The Euphoria score, and soundtrack, both with hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify and millions of views on TikTok and YouTube, is set to influence the course of pop music just like its predecessors Skins, 13 Reasons Why and even, tangentially, The Twilight Saga did.

And producer and songwriter Labrinth is the man behind it all.

Who’s Labrinth?

Labrinth, real name Timothy Lee McKenzie, is a British musician and producer who has worn a number of hats within the music industry over the years. As an artist, Labrinth is best known for massive hits ‘Beneath Your Beautiful‘ featuring Emeli Sandé and ‘Jealous‘, both of which have racked up hundreds of millions of views on YouTube. He also formed the supergroup LSD (Labrinth, Sia, Diplo) in 2018.

While he is a massively successful artist in his own right, it seems that his best talents may actually lie behind the scenes as a producer and songwriter — in fact, he wrote and self-produced both of his hit songs ‘Beneath Your Beautiful’ and ‘Jealous’, and has worked with (either as songwriter, producer or both) Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Rihanna, The Weeknd, Lana Del Rey, Kanye West, Sam Smith, Eminem, Noah Cyrus…and the list goes on.

While he has had hits and monumental collabs, Labrinth has largely flown under the radar in the pop world, consistently underrated as an artist. He has never really had his main-character moment — that is, until Euphoria came around in 2019.

Wait — What’s The Difference Between Score And Soundtrack?

Labrinth is the sole composer and producer of the show’s 26-track original score, and is the lead artist behind many of the singles popularised by the show (‘Still Don’t Know My Name’, ‘All For Us’ with Zendaya — and, for Season 2, ‘Yeh I Fuckin’ Did It’). Euphoria has released both the original score and official soundtrack, from season one of the series.

A score is a piece of music written specifically for a scene in TV, film or theatre — famous movie scores include Theme From Jurassic Park and Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter.

The commercially released soundtrack album that accompanies a film or TV series can consist of a few different things — it can include just the commercial songs used in the series/film, just the original score, songs that ‘inspired’ the series/film — even important parts of dialogue from the series/film.

The interesting thing here is that Labrinth’s largely instrumental, textural score for Euphoria is just as popular online, if not more so, than the commercially released pop tracks available on the soundtrack of the show. For example, ‘Formula’, a jerky, emotive one-and-a-half-minute long track on the Euphoria score — and not on the Euphoria soundtrack — is currently Labrinth’s most popular song on Spotify, sitting at 201 million streams and counting.

Minimalism In Pop

Labrinth’s artful, erratic, oftentimes lo-fi feeling score for Euphoria is unlike anything else we’ve heard in pop music or the scoring world in recent memory.

His production work feels minimal, with easily-identifiable layers to each track, making the emotional and sonic impact of otherworldly single ‘Still Don’t My Name’ even more impressive.

‘Still Don’t Know My Name’ cycles through only four chords throughout the entire song; written in the key of G minor, the most impactful moment in the progression is when the instrumental moves from G minor, to F, to Bb major, the relative major of the key. You can hear the same impactful chord progression in Kesha’s ‘Praying’ and SOPHIE’s ‘Immaterial’. This movement from minor to major is inherently grand, a powerful emotional statement that says a lot about the lovesick narrative of the song, and, broadly, the dark, dramatic story we are watching unfold on our screens.

This is the kind of effective simplicity that Labrinth has pretty much mastered, both in chord choice and as a producer. Where a lot of commercial pop music is as lush and layered as possible, there is a steadily increasing world of pop that is subtle, with few, identifiable layers and unusual, imperfect samples. WILLOW, and to an extent, Billie Eilish, are two other major acts working within a similar style — but no one is doing it quite like Labrinth.

The enduring popularity of multiple tracks from the official Euphoria score prove this minimal style’s allure.

The Power Of Euphoria And TikTok

Euphoria’s ability to tell the dark stories of its teenage protagonists with equal parts empathy, vulnerability, and spectacle has propelled it into ‘modern classic’ territory. The show has already had a significant influence on many aspects of pop culture since its debut in 2019; Euphoria-inspired fashion and makeup tutorials are everywhere, as fans across the world try to recreate the costuming seen on the show.

TikTok, the easiest place to go to see what exactly the kids are up to these days, is all over Euphoria, and, in turn, Labrinth’s work on the series. One quick glance can tell us that the official TikTok sounds from the Euphoria score have been used in roughly two million videos — and that’s not even counting the ‘unofficial’ uses of the score on the platform.

Labrinth’s work is reaching audiences on TikTok that most artists can only dream of. As TikTok holds such influence over the modern music industry, it makes sense that modern pop trends will naturally follow in what has been most popular on the platform over the last couple of years.

The sensation of Euphoria, buoyed by the hurricane of support on TikTok, will propel Labrinth into new realms of fame and influence as a songwriter and producer — and, for an artist who has been so consistently underrated over the years, flying under the radar despite making incredible work, it’s about time.

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Eilish Gilligan is a musician and writer from Melbourne. She streams at twitch.tv/eilishgilligan and tweets at @eilishgilligan.