Everybody dance now — it’s Café Disco time.
On the latest episode of the Office Ladies podcast, former co-stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey chatted all about the music budget for the Season 5 episode, “Café Disco.”
As an Office superfan, I find learning about behind-the-scenes show costs absolutely fascinating. The Office Ladies podcast has shared a few intriguing financial tidbits in the past — including a Michael Scott joke that cost $60,000 and how Jim’s gas station proposal to Pam became the most expensive scene of the show — and now they revealed which song from “Café Disco” cost $40,000.
I’d give you a hint, but I already did. Think about it…
Fischer explained that while there was no location shooting or particularly pricey stunts or props, the episode — in which Michael transforms his old Michael Scott Paper Company office into Scranton’s hottest cafe/disco hybrid — featured a lot of music, and getting music rights is no easy feat. The Office‘s line producer Randy Cordray told Fischer that there are two kinds of music rights.
“There are sync rights, which is where you’re going to play a song by the original artist and that’s all. You’re just going to hear their song,” she said. “But then there are master rights, and that’s what you need if a character is going to sing or hum song.”
“Randy said that they wanted us to be able to sing along or hum along as we were dancing, and so we had to get both sync and master rights to every single song,” Fischer continued. “There was only one song that appeared in the script. If you read the script, different scenes will say ‘music is playing’ or ‘Erin presses play,’ but it doesn’t say what song comes out…except for one time in the script.”
The one song from the script is, of course, “Everybody Dance Now,” which Michael lip syncs and blasts through the vents to entice everyone to abandon their work in favor of a dance party. According to Fischer, getting the rights to the song cost $40,000.
“Randy had our post-production supervisor, Jake Aust, reach out to Universal Music — you know, because our show was made by NBC Universal — and see if they could get a list of songs that we could license for either free or for not that much money. And then he gave that list to Warren [Lieberstein] and Halsted [Sullivan, episode writers], and he said, ‘What do you think?'” Fischer said. “So Warren and Halstead made a list of like their dream music. And then next to it, they would put a free alternative. And Randy sent this list over. It was really fascinating to look at.”
Fischer then shared an example of a dream song and a free alternative.
“You know that opening scene, when Michael is kind of dancing alone? Their first choice was ‘Disturbia’ by Rihanna,” she said. “Their free alternative, which appears in the show, is ‘Car Wash.'”
The music budget for the entire episode was reportedly $85,200, but the team mostly used free, low-cost songs, because they spent most of the money on two tracks in particular: “Everybody Dance Now” and “YMCA.”
Be sure to listen to the full podcast to hear more behind-the-scenes stories from filming “Café Disco.”
You can stream episodes of The Office on Peacock and follow along with the podcast every week on Earwolf, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.
