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In the last week, highly anticipated songs by Drake and Taylor Swift appeared to leak online, sparking enormous reactions. Massive Reddit threads spawned, dissecting musical choices. Meme videos were created simulating other rappers’ reactions to being dissed by Drake. The rapper Rick Ross even responded to the song’s bars about him with a diss track of his own. 

But there was one big problem: neither Swift nor Drake confirmed that the songs were real. In fact, loud contingents on social media claimed that the songs were AI-generated hoaxes, and begged fellow fans not to listen to them. Fervent fans soon became engulfed in rabid hunts for clues and debates aimed at decoding the songs’ levels of authenticity. 

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These types of arguments have recently intensified and will only continue ballooning, as AI vocal clones keep improving and becoming increasingly accessible to everyday people. These days, even an artist’s biggest fans have trouble telling the difference between their heroes and AI-creations. They will continue to be stymied in the coming months, as the music industry and lawmakers slowly work to determine how best to protect human creators from artificial imposters.

The Advent of AI Deepfakes

AI first shook the pop music world last year, when a song that seemed to be by Drake and the Weekend called “Heart on My Sleeve” went viral, with millions of plays across TikTok, Spotify, and YouTube. But the song was soon revealed to have been created by an anonymous musician named ghostwriter977, who used an AI-powered filter to turn their voice into those of both pop stars.

Many fans of both artists loved the song anyway, and it was later submitted for Grammys consideration. And some artists embraced new deepfake technology, including Grimes, who has long experimented with technological advancements and who developed a clone of her voice and then encouraged musicians to create songs using it.

But soundalikes soon began roiling the fanbases of other artists. Many top stars, like Frank Ocean and Beyoncé, have turned to intense policies of secrecy around their output (Ocean has carried around physical hard drives of his music to prevent leaking), resulting in desperate fans going to extreme lengths to try to obtain new songs. This has opened the door for scammers: Last year, a scammer sold AI-created songs to Frank Ocean superfans for thousands of dollars. A few months later, snippets that purported to be taken from new Harry Styles and One Direction songs surfaced across the web, with fans also paying for those. But many fans argued vociferously that they were hoaxes. Not even AI-analysis companies could determine whether they were real, 404 Media reported.  

Read More: AI’s Influence on Music Is Raising Some Difficult Questions

Drake and Taylor… Or Not?

This week, AI shook up the fanbases of two of the biggest pop stars in the world: Taylor Swift and Drake. First came a snippet of Drake’s “Push Ups,” a track that seemingly responded to Kendrick Lamar’s taunts of him in the song “Like That.” (“Pipsqueak, pipe down,” went one line from “Push Ups.”) The track, which also took aim at Rick Ross, The Weeknd, and Metro Boomin, quickly went viral, and Ross fired back a diss track of his own.  

But the internet was divided as to whether or not the clip was actually made by Drake. The original leak was low quality; Drake’s vocals sound grainy and monotone. Even the rapper Joe Budden, who hosts the prominent hip-hop podcast The Joe Budden Podcast, said that he was “on the fence” for a while about whether or not it was AI.

A higher quality version of the song was subsequently released, leading many news outlets and social media posters to treat “Push Ups” as a genuine Drake song. Strangely enough, Drake has toyed with this ambiguity: He has yet to claim the song as his own, but posted an Instagram story containing people dancing to parts of it. Whether or not he made it, the song has become an unmistakable entry in a sprawling rap beef that has taken the hip-hop world by storm. 

“Push Ups” has a reference to Taylor Swift: It accuses Lamar of being so controlled by his label that they commanded him to record a “verse for the Swifties,” on the 2015 remix of her song “Bad Blood.” On Wednesday, Swifties went into a frenzy when a leaked version of her highly anticipated new album, The Tortured Poets Department, began making the rounds online two days before its release date. Purported leaks have been popping up for months, including some that were eventually debunked as AI-generated. Given all of the false trails across the web, many Swift fans dismissed these new leaks as fake as well. But the songs are also being treated as real by many fans on Reddit, who are already announcing their favorite tracks and moments a day before the album’s official release.

Read More: Everything We Know About Taylor Swift’s New Album The Tortured Poets Department

listened to TTPD leaks and genuinely it’s so funny that even her fans can’t tell if it’s AI or not. pretty sure they were real tracks but just the fact that her own stans were in denial tells me everything I need to know about the root of the love for her artistry

— mina 🤹🏽‍♀️ (@tectonicromance) April 18, 2024

Can the music industry fight back? 

Some of these vocal deepfakes are not much more than a nuisance to major artists, because they are low-quality and easy to detect. AI tools often will get the timbre of a distinctive voice slightly wrong, and can glitch when artists use melisma—sliding up and down on a single syllable—or suddenly jump registers. Some pronunciations of lyrics also come out garbled, or with a slightly wrong accent. 

But AI tools are constantly improving and getting closer to the real thing. OpenAI recently shared a preview of Voice Engine, their latest tool that generates natural-sounding speech mimicking certain speakers. Researchers and AI companies are racing to create voice clone detection software, but their success rates have been uneven. 

So some musicians and music labels are fighting back with the avenues they have available to them. Three major music publishers—Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO—sued the AI company Anthropic, alleging that the company infringed on copyrighted song lyrics. More than 200 musicians, including Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder, and Nicki Minaj, recently signed a letter decrying the “predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses.” And BPI, a UK music industry group, threatened legal action against the vocal cloning service Jammable.

The music industry has growing support from lawmakers. Last month, Tennessee governor Bill Lee signed into law the ELVIS Act, which prohibits people from using AI to mimic an artist’s voice without their permission. And U.S. senators announced a similar bill called the NO FAKES Act. “We must put in place rules of the road to protect people from having their voice and likeness replicated through AI without their permission,” Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote in a statement. 

It will likely take a long time for this bill or other similar ones to wind their way through the halls of Congress. Even if one of them passes, it will be exceedingly hard to enforce, given the anonymity of many of these online posters and the penchant for deleted songs to pop back up in the form of unlicensed copies. So it’s all but assured that deepfaked songs will continue to excite, confuse, and anger music fans in the months and years to come.

Bryan Kohberger's alibi allegedly hinges on his interest in stargazing.   Attorneys for the 29-year-old—who has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony...

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Under the Bridge.

On the evening of Nov. 14, 1997, 14-year-old Reena Virk was invited to a party near the Craigflower Bridge in Saanich, a suburb of Victoria, British Columbia. She never returned home, and was later discovered to have been ruthlessly beaten and killed by a group of her peers.

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Based on late author Rebecca Godfrey’s best-selling 2005 book of the same name, Hulu’s new true-crime miniseries Under the Bridge dramatizes the before and after of Reena’s brutal murder, which sent shockwaves throughout Canada. The first two episodes, now streaming, jump back and forth through time to depict the events that led up to Reena’s (played by Vritika Gupta) death and the start of the investigation that followed.

Much of the show, created by Quinn Shephard, unfolds from the perspectives of Godfrey (played by Riley Keough), a journalist who grew up in Victoria and was working on a novel about teenage girls in her hometown at the time of the murder, and police officer Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone), a composite character representing the local authorities who investigated and solved the case.

In real life, Godfrey did not aid in the investigation into Reena’s murder as she does in the series. But she did spend six years interviewing the accused and attending court trials after the fact. “I went home soon after [the killing] and went into the prison,” Godfrey told Interview Magazine in 2019 of returning to her hometown. “I was just stunned because the girls all looked like normal, cool, young teenage girls, not particularly like killers.”

Here’s what to know about the true story behind Under the Bridge.

What happened to Reena Virk?

According to her father Manjit, who wrote a 2008 book about his daughter’s life and death, Reena was bullied throughout her childhood. She grew up feeling like an outsider and frequently rebelled against her Indian-Canadian parents—who had raised her as a Jehovah’s Witness in the tradition of her mother Suman’s family. Prior to her death, Reena had run away on several occasions and reportedly falsely accused her father of physical, mental, and sexual abuse so that she could live in foster care, where she believed she would have more freedom. She later recanted her allegations of abuse and returned to live with her parents.

When she was 14, Reena started hanging out with a group of teens whose ringleader, Nicole Cook, has admitted to initiating the attack on Reena the night she was killed by putting a cigarette out on her forehead. Cook’s counterpart in the Under the Bridge book and show is named Josephine Bell, a result of Godfrey fictionalizing the names of the eight teens involved in the assault with the exception of the two who were convicted of Reena’s murder. Most of their real names have come out in subsequent years.

On the night of Reena’s death, police arrived to break up a large gathering of teens hanging out in the field behind Saanich’s Shoreline School. A smaller contingent then moved to the Craigflower Bridge, where Cook—who reportedly wanted to punish Reena for spreading rumors about her—and a group of seven others savagely beat Reena. After the rest had dispersed, two of the attackers, Cook’s best friend, 15-year-old Kelly Ellard, and a 16-year-old boy named Warren Glowatski, followed Reena as she staggered away, continued to assault her, and ultimately drowned her in the nearby Gorge Waterway.

Reena’s body was found a little over a week later on Nov. 22, 1997.

Read More: Lily Gladstone, Riley Keough, and a Stellar Young Cast Make Under the Bridge More Than Just Another ‘Dead-Girl Show’

What happened to the teens responsible?

In 1998, the six girls—including Cook—who became known as the “Shoreline Six” were convicted of assault in juvenile court for their role in the initial attack that took place. They received sentences ranging from 60-day conditional sentences to one year in jail.

The following year, Glowatski was convicted of second-degree murder in adult criminal court and sentenced to life in prison with a chance at parole after seven years served. He openly expressed remorse and participated in restorative justice programs, including one in which he apologized face-to-face to Reena’s parents. He was granted day parole in 2007 and full parole in 2010.

Ellard was also tried as an adult and convicted of second-degree murder in 2000. Her first conviction was overturned on appeal, leading to a second trial that ended in a mistrial in 2004 due to a hung jury. However, she was convicted again in a third trial in 2005 and received the same sentence as Glowatski. Ellard, who has changed her name to Kerry Sim, was granted day parole in 2017 after giving birth to her first child in prison and taking responsibility for her role in the murder for the first time. She subsequently gave birth to a second child while out on day parole in 2020 and reportedly rejected a chance for full parole in 2022, telling the Parole Board of Canada that she was “situationally” not ready for freedom.

In the months and years that followed Reena’s murder, the case sparked an intense media frenzy and created a widespread moral panic over bullying and teen violence in Canadian society. Twenty years on, Godfrey wrote in a 2017 article for Vice that the crime “continues to fascinate and disturb.”

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Guitar legend Dickey Betts, who co-founded the Allman Brothers Band and wrote their biggest hit, “Ramblin’ Man,” has died. He was 80.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer died at his home in Osprey, Florida, David Spero, Betts’ manager of 20 years, confirmed. Betts had been battling cancer for more than a year and had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Spero said.

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“He was surrounded by his whole family and he passed peacefully. They didn’t think he was in any pain,” Spero said by phone.

Betts shared lead guitar duties with Duane Allman in the original Allman Brothers Band to help give the group its distinctive sound and create a new genre: Southern rock. Acts including Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kid Rock, Phish and Jason Isbell — among many others — were influenced by the Allmans’ music, which combined the blues, country, R&B and jazz with ‘60s rock.

“My first concert was Dickey Betts at Coleman’s in Rome, New York in 1983,” blues-rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa said in an Instagram post Thursday, crediting Betts with inspiring his favorite electric guitar model. “Blew my mind and made me want a Les Paul.”

Founded in 1969, the Allmans were a pioneering jam band, trampling the traditional notion of three-minute pop songs by performing lengthy compositions in concert and on record. The band was also notable as a biracial group from the Deep South.

Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident in 1971, and founding member Berry Oakley was killed in a motorcycle crash a year later. That left Betts and Allman’s younger brother Gregg as the band’s leaders, but they frequently clashed, and substance abuse caused further dysfunction. The band broke up at least twice before reforming, and has had more than a dozen lineups.

The Allman Brothers Band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and earned a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2012. Betts left the group for good in 2000, and also played solo and with his own band Great Southern, which included his son, guitarist Duane Betts.

Forrest Richard Betts was born Dec. 12, 1943, and was raised in the Bradenton, Florida, area, near the highway 41 he sang about in “Ramblin’ Man.” His family had lived in the area since the mid-19th century.

Betts grew up listening to country, bluegrass and Western swing, and played the ukulele and banjo before focusing on the electric guitar because it impressed girls. At 16 he left home for his first road trip, joining the circus to play in a band.

He returned home, and with bassist Oakley joined a group that became the Jacksonville, Florida-based band Second Coming. One night in 1969 Betts and Oakley jammed with Duane Allman, already a successful session musician, and his younger brother, and together they formed the Allman Brothers Band.

The group moved to Macon, Georgia, and released a self-titled debut album in 1969. A year later came the album “Idlewild South,” highlighted by Betts’ instrumental composition “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” which soon became a concert staple.

The 1971 double album “At Fillmore East,” now considered among the greatest live albums of the classic rock era, was the Allmans’ commercial breakthrough and cemented their performing reputation by showcasing the unique guitar interplay between Allman and Betts. Their styles contrasted, with Allman playing bluesy slide guitar, while Betts’ solos and singing tugged the band toward country. When layered in harmony, their playing was especially distinctive.

The group also had two drummers: “Jaimoe” Johanson, who is Black, and Butch Trucks.

Duane Allman died four days after “Fillmore” was certified as a gold record, but the band carried on and crowds continued to grow. The 1973 album “Brothers and Sisters” rose to No. 1 on the charts and featured “Ramblin’ Man,” with Betts singing the lead and bringing twang to the Top 40. The song reached No. 2 on the singles charts and was kept out of the No. 1 spot by “Half Breed” by Cher, who later married Gregg Allman.

The soaring sound of Betts’ guitar on “Ramblin’ Man” reverberated in neighborhood bars around the country for decades, and the song underscored his knack for melodic hooks. “Ramblin’ Man” was the Allmans’ only Top Ten hit, but Betts’ catchy 7 1/2-minute instrumental composition “Jessica,” recorded in 1972, became an FM radio staple.

Betts also wrote or co-wrote some of the band’s other best-loved songs, including “Blue Sky” and “Southbound.” In later years the group remained a successful touring act with Betts and Warren Haynes on guitar. Gregg Allman and Butch Trucks died in 2017.

After leaving the Allmans for good, Betts continued to play with his own group and lived in the Bradenton area with his wife, Donna.

Bonny Barker and Emily Hunt have gained an online following making videos about Taylor Swift, turning a fun side hobby to a full-time career. They discuss the community their channel has fostered, why Swift and her music mean so much to them and their supporters, and what it was like to get noticed by Taylor herself.

The exact moment Taylor Swift came gliding into my life was when she released “The Man” music video. I remember it all too well. I was leading projects in a predominantly male organization. Colleagues had been quick to criticize my violations of unwritten rules regarding how women should lead—rules dictating niceties, get-in-line supportiveness, and instruction with subtlety.

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“The Man,” written from an ambitious women’s perspective, tells the story of living in a world built for someone else. It is fun, lighthearted, and empowering. Swift has another song, “Mad Woman,” written from the perspective of how the patriarchy perceives these ambitious women. This song is dark, intense, and isolating. The fact that these two songs tell the story of each “patriarchal opponent” with such precision is what makes Swift a lyrical mastermind. Her lyrics made me feel seen.

In fact, many of us can see ourselves in her music. It drives her fandom. She taps into our feelings by writing deeply about her own. But the universality of her lyrics is not the only factor driving Taylor Swift’s mega stardom. The weight of her fans’ purchasing power is the other.

The media repeatedly posit that Swift is a powerhouse uplifting economies across the globe. Yet she would be among the first to acknowledge her fans as the true driving force. She understands their power because, in what can be best captured as a full circle moment, she also is them. Swift represents how far millennials have come in claiming ownership and independence over their financial lives. I call this phenomenon Swiftynomics. Let me explain.

Reports argue that millennial suburban women are Swift’s biggest fans but attend an Eras Tour concert and you will see men and women, young and old, parents and children, and people from cities and rural and suburban areas. Her success, while influenced by the accelerated economic independence of women, is not contained by it. Her lyrics transcend demographics giving her a wide-ranging audience—more specifically, a fan base spanning over half (53%) the U.S. adult population (more than 137 million fans).

Swift’s stardom has also accelerated because young adults, particularly women, have gained more economic agency in recent years. This is not only largely due to millennials living alone or away from their familial unit, but also, in some cases, living with parents while working. In the latter scenario, they accumulate earnings with more flexibility to spend on luxury goods by saving on the essential costs covered by their parents like rent and food. Additionally, household consumer expenditures have historically been decided by women but usually with the approval of another adult like a spouse. These expenditures generally focused on purchasing goods and services for the family, rather than oneself. These days, more women than ever before are living alone, which builds economic independence and eliminates positions of unequal bargaining power within the household. Women today are almost twice as likely to live alone in their early 20s relative to their 1950s counterparts and fewer live with a spouse or child, as shown in the figure below.

Even among women today, those aged 20 to 26 in 2023 were less likely to live with a spouse and child than their 2010 counterparts. Shifts in living arrangements are due to broad gains in education, reduced overt sexism in the workplace, access (now more limited) to reproductive health, increases in life expectancy, shifts in living arrangements driven by the pandemic, and an overall decent labor market leading to better paying jobs.

And if they were to marry (which is also quickly becoming less of a social obligation) women are bringing independently earned resources with them. As seen in the results below, married women aged 25 to 54 are three times more likely to be in the paid labor force today than in 1950. They earn more than their spouse in almost one-third of married couple households, and more than 50% have a college degree.

The increased economic freedom experienced by women helps explain why they are purchasing goods and services driven by their own preferences in addition to household needs. They are willingly spending on items that give them joy—like variants of vinyl records or Eras Tour tickets. Their shifting economic power directly contributes to the Taylor Swift craze and the local economic whirlwinds that follow her concerts across the globe.

Swift’s take from the Eras Tour alone has been estimated to reach $4.1billion. She is without a doubt financially powerful; a Millennial herself making more than her partner and with lots of economic agency. She takes ownership over her own music and business, which fuels her success. She controlled 85% of the revenue from Eras Tour tickets, previously unthinkable in the music industry. She uses that to build out a concert experience for her fans and reinvests in communities along the concert tour path.

Read More: The Staggering Economic Impact of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour

What’s more, parents now listen with their children and purchase tickets to concerts as a family affair. Daughters watch football games with their dads instead of tik-toking with friends as they look for Taylor Swift in the audience and viewership soars. The world intergenerationally revolves around her because she speaks to many of us—and this gets to my point.

The Taylor Swift effect is a mix of universality in her storytelling and the downstream product of growth in women’s economic power and agency—of which she is a primary example. However, she is but one example. We see it play out in other aspects of society like women’s sports, female-focused wealth management, shifting support for care policies, and in all aspects of entertainment. That, in essence, is Swiftynomics at its best.

It’s clear that women today want content that speaks to their lived experiences in this one-size-fits-men world we live in. And we’re willing to pay for it, too.

The latest season of Abbott Elementary is filled with guest appearances from internet stars. Since it premiered in 2021, the Emmy-winning workplace sitcom, set at an underfunded Philadelphia public school, has consistently woven internet culture into its plots—and the show’s lightning-fast, blink-or-you’ll-miss-it jokes routinely go viral online. It makes sense given that Abbott Elementary creator and star Quinta Brunson got her start in comedy making videos online, producing series for BuzzFeed and other platforms that are now cemented in internet culture lexicon.

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Now, familiar faces from TikTok and YouTube videos are getting their moment to shine on a traditional sitcom. See the viral stars who have made appearances on Abbott Elementary below.

Quinta Brunson

Quinta Brunson was regularly featured in videos across BuzzFeed’s different channels before breaking off to work on her own projects that she pitched to digital networks.

In 2019, after a few of her videos went viral, Brunson broke into the mainstream as a cast member and writer on HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show in the show’s first season—her only season because she ended up selling her show to ABC. She got Abbott Elementary picked up and currently serves as the show’s creator, writer, and executive producer. She also stars as the bubbly, optimistic teacher Janine Teagues.

Zack Fox

Zack Fox made a name for himself on social media as a professional troll on X and rapper. Both of those talents came to use when he made an appearance on producer Kenny Beats’ YouTube series “The Cave.” In the show, he invites well-known rappers to his studio where he makes them a beat and they freestyle over his new creation. Rappers like Vince Staples, Doja Cat, Lil Yatchy, and Rico Nasty have all stopped by his studio for an episode of “The Cave.”

Read More: Abbott Elementary Gave Me My Greatest Success, Four Decades Into My Career

Fox joined Kenny and did what he does best: cause a ruckus. He got in the booth and they made “Jesus is The One (I Got Depression),” a deeply unserious song that took off on social media, giving way for the song to reach No. 1 on Spotify’s U.S. Viral charts, became Kenny’s most popular video with over 9 million views and they made a Genius “Verified” video where they broke down the lyrics.

On Abbott, he plays Janine’s deadbeat ex-boyfriend and burgeoning rapper in the drug prevention space, Tariq. After they break up, Tariq goes from being a starving artist, mooching off of Janine to a grade school touring rapper with F.A.D.E. (this show’s version of the D.A.R.E. program). He pops in throughout the series, mostly recently moderating a panel as the president of the PTA.

Sabrina Brier

Most people have a friend like Sabrina Brier—or all the characters she plays in her painfully honest skits about friendships and relationships. Many of her skits have a moment where she’s speaking to someone and they say something either a little too real or a little too honest and it catches her off guard, to which she says “OH!” It’s become ubiquitous on TikTok.

🤪 pic.twitter.com/tDIjRRlvUi

— Sabrina Brier (@sabrinabrier) February 22, 2024

Brier made an appearance in episode four of season three as Jessca, a substitute teacher for Janine’s class. She took her pseudo Valley girl accent and vocal fry to the halls of Abbott Elementary in just one episode.

Casey Frey

Casey Frey’s appearance in Abbott is a welcome surprise. He got his start on the now-defunct short form video platform, Vine, with a few viral moments—most notably, his “Get TF Out of My Way Type Way” video. Since his Vine days, he’s moved over to TikTok, where he’s amassed a following of over one million people, with many of his videos getting over a million views. In Abbott, audiences seem him play a F.A.D.E. rapper in the same vein as Tariq—a nonsensical rhymer warning elementary school students about the dangers of drugs. He fully embodies the character and quite honestly, his character needs a larger arc.

JaBria McCullum

Jabria is an ACTRESS, okay! #AbbottElementary pic.twitter.com/CEquNyQoir

— 🐝 (@beydisciple) April 11, 2024

Abbott’s child actors, who make up the titular school’s students, are highly regarded excellent comedic timing. As the show grew in popularity, so did calls for seven-year-old TikTok star JaBria McCullum to join the cast. She’s one of the many characters on her godbrother’s TikTok series, “Are You Smarter Than a Preschooler?” where he asks children questions like “Who fought in World War 2?” and “Spell Mississippi,” the results of which are utterly adorable.

@laronhinesofficial

are you smarter than a preschooler? pt 91

♬ original sound – La’Ron®🎤

The internet’s calls were finally answered in episode nine this season where she played one of Gregory’s students asking what she should do if one of her teeth falls out. Just like the other young actors on the show, she knows how to steal a scene.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by JaBria McCullum (@jabriamccullum)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Netflix series Baby Reindeer.

In his one-man play-turned-hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer, Scottish comedian Richard Gadd recounts the harrowing true story of how his experience with being stalked forced him to confront a buried trauma.

Playing a fictionalized version of himself named Donny Dunn, Gadd unpacks the years-long stalking and harassment campaign he endured at the hands of a middle-aged woman he refers to by the pseudonym Martha (played with a chilling intensity by Jessica Gunning) while struggling to make it as a stand-up and writer in London. As is depicted in the show, the stalking began in the wake of Gadd being groomed, repeatedly sexually assaulted, and raped by an older male TV industry mentor (named Darrien in the show and played by Tom Goodman-Hill)—an ordeal that left him reeling emotionally, questioning his sexuality, and wrestling with extreme self-loathing. Still, Gadd doesn’t shy away from his own complicity in what transpired with Martha, frequently painting himself in a negative light as the story unfolds over the course of seven episodes.

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“It would be unfair to say she was an awful person and I was a victim. That didn’t feel true,” he told The Guardian in 2019 following the sold-out inaugural run of the Baby Reindeer play. “I did loads of things wrong and made the situation worse. I wasn’t a perfect person [back then], so there’s no point saying I was.”

When Gadd debuted his one-man show at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it had been two years since he had seen or heard from Martha. Three years earlier, while the stalking was still in full swing, he had won the festival’s top prize for his comedy show Monkey See, Monkey Do, which explored his experience as a survivor of sexual violence. The Baby Reindeer Netflix series, which is currently at number two on the streamer’s most-watched charts following its release last week, is an amalgam of the two stage shows.

“It felt like a risky thing—to do a ‘warts and all’ version of the story where I held my hands up to the mistakes I had made with Martha,” Gadd wrote in a piece that accompanied the show’s debut. “The foolish flirting. The cowardly excuses as to why we could not be together. Not to mention the themes of internalized prejudice and sexual shame that underpinned it all. The graphic details of the drugging and grooming and sexual violence I had experienced only a few years before…But equally I could not shy away from the truth of what had happened to me. This was a messy, complicated situation. But one that needed to be told, regardless.”

Here’s what to know about the true story behind Baby Reindeer.

What happened with Martha?

Similar to how the show begins, Gadd has said that the stalking started after he gave Martha a free cup of tea when she came into the London pub where he was working in 2015. “At first everyone at the pub thought it was funny that I had an admirer,” he told The Times. “Then she started to invade my life, following me, turning up at my gigs, waiting outside my house, sending thousands of voicemails and emails.”

Over the next four and a half years, Gadd recounts that Martha sent him 41,071 emails, 350 hours’ worth of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, 106 pages of letters, and a variety of strange gifts. Every email that appears in the Netflix series is a message that Gaad received in real life. She also harassed a number of people who were close to Gaad, including his parents and a trans woman (named Teri in the show and played by Nava Mau) whom he had begun dating shortly before the stalking began.

When Gadd tried to go to the police, he discovered that the laws surrounding harassment and abuse are, in his own words, “so stupid.” Despite the fact that the show presents Martha as having been previously convicted on similar charges, Gadd was told he needed concrete evidence of direct threats for authorities to take any action.

“They look for black and white, good and evil, and that’s not how it works,” he told The Independent. “You can really affect someone’s life within the parameters of legality, and that is sort of mad.”

How do things stand today?

In the show, Martha ultimately receives a nine-month prison sentence and five-year restraining order for stalking Donny. In real life, Gaad has never disclosed the details of how the situation was resolved beyond the fact that he had “mixed feelings” about it.

“I can’t emphasize enough how much of a victim she is in all this,” he told The Independent. “Stalking and harassment is a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to paint her as a monster, because she’s unwell, and the system’s failed her.”

As for how Gaad’s sexual assault has continued to impact his life, the finale culminates in a closing sequence in which Donny shows up at Darrien’s home to confront him only to accept an offer to work on his new show instead. A distressed Donny then finds himself at a bar where he is offered a drink on the house in a moment that flips his first interaction with Martha on its head.

“I think that was almost the most truthful scene of the entire show. What abuse does is it creates psychological damage as well as physical damage,” Gadd told GQ. “There’s a pattern where a lot of people who have been abused feel like they need their abusers. I don’t think it was a cynical ending, it was showing an element of abuse that hadn’t been seen on television before, which is, unfortunately, the deeply entrenched, negative, psychological effects of attachment you can sometimes have with your abuser.”

Fashion designers and their muses, art enthusiasts, and some of the world’s most influential celebrities will all gather at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in three weeks for fashion’s biggest night: the Met Gala.

The exclusive annual soirée is the primary source of funding for the museum’s Costume Institute, which is home to nearly 33,000 fashion objects from the past seven centuries. The event has also become a destination for fashion insiders and pop culture power players alike, with its red carpet watched eagerly by viewers around the world.

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Read more: How Anna Wintour Wields Her Power

Famously hosted every year on the first Monday in May, this year’s Met Gala will take place May 6 and its suggested theme is “The Garden of Time.” The dress code is inspired by the 2024 Costume Institute exhibit, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” which will open on May 10 and features 250 items from the department’s permanent collection.

Here’s everything you need to know about the event.

When is the 2024 Met Gala?

This year’s Costume Institute Benefit will take place on Monday, May 6, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The red carpet ahead of the event will start at 6 pm ET and will be streamed on Vogue‘s website and social media channels, as well as broadcasted on E!

What is the theme and who decides it?

The Costume Institute’s chief curator, Andrew Bolton is responsible for curating the museum’s annual spring fashion exhibit, which often inspires the dress code and theme for the Met Gala. This year’s exhibit is “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” which reimagines how museum visitors can interact and experience historical garments and fashion objects that may no longer be worn or touched. According to Vogue, the exhibit will feature 250 pieces from the Costume Institute’s permanent collection that span over 400 years of fashion history, including designs by Schiaparelli, Givenchy, and Dior. Because some garments, like a Charles Frederick Worth ball gown from 1877, are too delicate to be worn, the exhibit will use a diverse range of technologies and activations to create a sensory experience for all the garments, invoking senses from smell and sound to texture and motion.

“By appealing to the widest possible range of human senses, the show aims to reconnect with the works on display as they were originally intended—with vibrancy, with dynamism, and ultimately with life,” Bolton said in a press release about the exhibit.

What does that mean for the dress code?

The dress code for the night is “The Garden of Time,” seemingly drawing inspiration from the exhibit’s tension between fashion history and the ephemeral nature of physical garments. The evocative theme leaves plenty of room for guests’ interpretations—although it would be a good bet that florals will be a mainstay of this year’s Met Gala red carpet.

Who are co-chairs hosting this year’s gala?

Vogue editor-in-chief and Costume Institute trustee Anna Wintour has been a co-chair of the Met Gala since 1995 (excluding 1996 and 1998,) and in the nearly three decades since she joined, she’s helped to make the annual museum benefit a star-studded affair by championing the celebrity co-chair. The high-profile figures who co-chair the event share hosting duties, like helping create the guest list, curating the menu for the evening, and offering insight on the decor. Past co-chairs include Rihanna, Serena Williams, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Amal Clooney. This year’s co-chairs are Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, and Chris Hemsworth, while Jonathan Anderson, creative director of the fashion label Loewe, and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will serve as honorary chairs.

Who is expected to attend?

While the guest list for the Met Gala is never disclosed before the event, it’s become a coveted invite for celebrities, fashion houses and powerful figures alike, who must be personally approved by Wintour before they can purchase their $50,000 ticket to the event or a $300,000 table. The gala’s attendance is limited to about 450 guests.

What happens at the Met Gala?

Because phones— and therefore cameras—aren’t allowed at the actual Met Gala, there are no social media posts revealing what happens once guests enter the museum. But the New York Times reports that upon arrival, guests are greeted by the evening’s chairs, and they can preview the exhibit during the cocktail hour. The main event of the night is the seated dinner, which usually includes a performance or some form of entertainment. Past performers have included Madonna, Rihanna and Katy Perry.

Where can you watch the Met Gala and its red carpet?

While securing an invite to the actual Met Gala may be a tough feat, everyone can join in the night’s action by watching the live stream of the event on Vogue‘s social media pages and website.

A Taylor Swift song is nothing without its bridge. The star’s strongest skills as a storyteller and lyricist are on full display in that critical moment, which marks a noticeable shift in the song, whether it’s in the narrative, tone, tempo, or a combination of the three. And for Swift, the bridge is often what elevates a good song to a truly great one. Over the course of her career, she’s introduced songs with bridges that run the emotional spectrum—some are meant to be screamed at the top of your lungs, while others can be quietly sung through tears.

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With over 240 songs across 10 original studio and 4 re-recorded albums, Swift has a bridge for just about every type of emotional catharsis. We decided to go through her discography to decide on the very best. To determine what makes for a bridge of superior caliber, we each compiled our own individual rankings, taking into account how the bridge fits in with each song, and then we added up those results.

25. “Love Story”

“Love Story,” the lead single off 2008’s Fearless, put Swift in the mainstream. It shot to the top of different Billboard charts and solidified her status as a crossover artist. In the song, Swift invokes Romeo and Juliet to tell the story of a seemingly doomed young couple with the bridge bringing down the tempo to signify her growing apprehension—that is, until Romeo gets down on one knee and the fairytale ends happily.—Moises Mendez II

Best line: “My faith in you was fading, when I met you on the outskirts of town”

24. “right where you left me”

The “evermore” bonus track feels more like a Gothic short story than a song. It tells the story of a woman frozen in time, haunting the restaurant where she had her heart broken. In the bridge, Swift shares what the rumor mill is saying about the “woman who lives in delusion” before changing the pronouns to reveal she’s talking about herself. “Time went on for everybody else, she won’t know it,” she sings, perfectly encapsulating the shame that comes from living in the past while everyone around you moves on.—Samantha Cooney

Best line: “She’s still 23 inside her fantasy, how it was supposed to be”

23. “Mr. Perfectly Fine”

Every major pop star needs a f-ck you anthem dedicated to someone who has done them wrong. When “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” rumored to be about Joe Jonas, reaches the bridge, it sounds like Swift is kicking a door open to a new phase of her life without her Perfectly Fine man.—MM

Best line: “Now I’m Miss Gonna Be Alright Someday, and someday, maybe you’ll miss me, but by then, you’ll be Mr. Too Late”

22. “Back to December”

Closing a chapter with someone you care about deeply is one of the most heartbreaking things anyone can go through, and Swift expertly details that pain in “Back to December,” singing, “It turns out freedom ain’t nothing but missin’ you, wishin’ I’d realized what I had when you were mine”—some of the most tragic lyrics in her entire discography. The bridge only twists the knife even deeper as she sings about how she’d do everything differently if she were given a second chance.—MM

Best line: I’d go back in time and change it, but I can’t. So, if the chain is on your door, I understand”

21. “You’re On Your Own, Kid”

Though this Midnights track is carried by a fast and light beat, the heart of the song, about yearning for and experiencing fame, is quite devastating. The price of celebrity is summed up in the haunting lines of its bridge: “The jokes weren’t funny, I took the money. My friends from home don’t know what to say.”—Annabel Gutterman

Best line: “So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it. You’ve got no reason to be afraid”

20. “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve”

Even though it was a bonus track, “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” quickly became a standout (if not the best song) of Midnights. Feverish and wild, the song unravels like a thunderstorm, as Swift wades through a toxic relationship over pulsing drums and haunting synths. In the eye of the storm is the bridge—a pleading call to a higher power for rest, followed by an earth-shattering line that further cements Swift’s lyrical genius: “I regret you all the time.”—Rachel Sonis

Best line: “I regret you all the time”

19. “betty”

At the center of the Betty/James/Inez teenage love triangle drawn out in the folklore standout “betty” is the question: “What if?” What if James wasn’t such a boy about things? What if he told Betty how he really felt? What if Inez never spread those “rumors” about James cheating with her on Betty? But in the bridge, where Swift often makes her biggest revelations, the “what if’s” give way to the truth about James’ restless summer spent with Inez, when he was really thinking about Betty. A moment of unbearable release—and of stinging regret.—RS

Best line: “I dreamt of you all summer long”

18. “Enchanted”

This Speak Now song had a resurgence on TikTok last year, with the bridge appearing everywhere, bringing everyone back to 2010. In the bridge, Swift blissfully blends the confidence in her feelings of falling for someone with the insecurity of not knowing if that person is in love with someone else. She perfectly describes meeting someone for the first time and instantly feeling enchanted. That someone is said to be Adam Young, the frontman of Owl City. Swift said an interview around the time the album came out that she wrote the song about a guy she was emailing and when they met, he mentioned being “wonderstruck,” which she incorporated into the tune. In a 2011 interview with Us Weekly, Young said the song is about him and responded to it with a song of his own.—MM

Best line: “Please, don’t be in love with someone else. Please, don’t have somebody waiting on you”

17. “Out of the Woods”

1989—Swift’s first full-on foray into pop music—is surprisingly sparse when it comes to soul-bearing bridges. (Case in point: “Style,” my all-time favorite Swift song, has a lyrically thin bridge). The one exception is “Out of the Woods,” with a bridge that serves as the song’s emotional and musical highpoint. Swift’s voice explodes as she describes a crash, and a snowmobile accident serves as a metaphor for the breakdown of a relationship. Despite the chaos and comedowns (“Remember when you said you couldn’t take the heat?”), the bridge ends with the hope that the relationship can make it, even if only for another day (“When the sun came up, you were looking at me.”)—SC

Best line: “Remember when you hit the brakes too soon? Twenty stitches in a hospital room”

16. “Treacherous”

This song from Red starts off soft and slow with lyrics that point to how easy it is to be consumed by the promise of love, even if that love is risky. The plucky chorus gives way to a powerful bridge that is most definitely meant to be screamed: “Two headlights shine through the sleepless night. And I will get you, get you alone.”—AG

Best line: “That nothing safe is worth the drive”

15. “You’re Losing Me”

“You’re Losing Me” was released as a vault song off Midnights just a month after it was reported Swift and her longtime boyfriend had split. While the bulk of the song is underwhelming, the bridge ranks among her best-ever, with some of her most emotionally raw songwriting. The lyrics balance righteous anger about not being given attention by a partner (“I’m the best thing at this party”) with anxious resignation about why it ended. It all builds up to the barnburner of a lyric: “And I wouldn’t marry me either.”—SC 

Best line: “And I wouldn’t marry me either. A pathological people pleaser. Who only wanted you to see her”

14. “Dress”

“Dress” is Swift’s most outwardly sexy song: the chorus is anchored around the line, “Only bought this dress so you could take it off.” But the bridge reveals the bluff: this is really a song about revealing the worst parts of yourself to someone and still having them want you. It’s all incredibly romantic and intimate.—SC 

Best line: “Even in my worst lies you saw the truth in me”

13. “Long Live”

Originally written as a love letter to Swift’s band and fans, the lyrics in this Speak Now song remind us all that there is so much beauty in living in the present, and even more beauty in being able to look back and remember how that present felt. Though much of “Long Live” is a celebration of memories, the bridge coalesces into a striking direct plea from Swift to protect and honor how the past interacts with the future.—AG 

Best line: “If you have children someday, when they point to the pictures, please, tell ‘em my name”

12. “champagne problems”

Swift tells the audience at the Eras Tour that she wrote one particular song during the pandemic with the hopes she’d one day hear fans scream its bridge in a stadium. That song is called “champagne problems”—and boy did I have fun screaming “what a shame she’s f-cked in the head” in Philadelphia last May. The song is a soft piano ballad about turning down a marriage proposal, and the bridge swells with scenes of devastation. The bridge’s bittersweet end promises the heartbroken ex will “find the real thing instead.” It’s a cathartic moment in the song—and at the show.—SC

Best line: “She would’ve made such a lovely bride. What a shame she’s fucked in the head, they said”

11. “You Belong With Me”

“You Belong With Me” is the quintessential country-pop song of 2009. It’s the type of song that gets you out of your seat. It begs to be scream-sung at the top of your lungs with your best friends by your side, especially the bridge, which captures the yearning of wanting your crush to see that you’re perfect for him.—MM

Best line: “I know your favorite songs, and you tell me ’bout your dreams. Think I know where you belong, think I know it’s with me”

10. “Death By A Thousand Cuts”

A Taylor Swift bridge ranking would not be complete without one that kind of feels like a rant—and “Death By a Thousand Cuts” is it. A song about an agonizing death of a relationship, what’s most interesting about this bridge is that it’s a stream of consciousness, with every line as cutting as the next, as Swift’s staccato delivery accentuates every dig. While her lover might’ve fired the first shot, Swift is here to deliver the final blow.—RS 

Best Line: “Paper cut stings from our paper thin plans”

9. “illicit affairs”

Most of this folklore song is a slow and often unsettling dissection of the true cost of infidelity. But Swift’s crooning turns much louder as she cries out in the bridge how, exactly, this relationship has broken her apart (she literally references needing to scream). It’s these lyrics that really crystallize how confusing it is to love a person who never really belonged to you.—AG 

Best line: “You showed me colors you know I can’t see with anyone else”

8. “Fifteen”

When Swift set to write the devastatingly vulnerable ballad “Fifteen,” she started with the bridge. “I started everything with the line ‘Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind’ and wrote everything else from that point, almost backwards,” Swift said of the song in her track-by-track explanation of the album on Big Machine Records’ website. That line makes not only the bridge, but the entire song—honest and searing, yet overflowing with sisterly love and empathy for her childhood best friend Abigail Anderson, as she goes through a brutal breakup.—RS 

Best Line: “Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind. And we both cried”

7. “the last great american dynasty“

Of all the “mad” characters that exist in the folklore universe, Swift’s sharp retelling of American heiress and socialite Rebekah Harkness’ story and her notorious parties at the “Holiday House” mansion in Rhode Island takes the cake. Steeped in fascinating tidbits about her life, Swift recounts how Harkness, who inherited the riches from her oil tycoon husband’s untimely death and even became the richest woman in America at one point, was considered an outcast and a madwoman for her unconventional choices and lavish lifestyle. Swift, of course, is not-so-subtly making connections to her own life here—and really lays it bare in the bridge: Swift bought Holiday House (now called “High Watch”) in 2013, a place where many of her own dalliances have resulted in serious drama, too. A kiss-off to the haters, Swift is the new madwoman in town, and she doesn’t really care what anyone thinks. Rebekah would, no doubt, be proud.—RS

Best line: “Free of women with madness, their men in bad habits. And then it was bought by me”

6. “Last Kiss”

Talk about emotional catharsis! This Speak Now song describes a terrible, consuming breakup, and what it feels like to obsess over the final moments of a relationship. The steady beat swells up at the bridge and suddenly the full intensity of the track emerges as Swift’s voice explodes. The desperation and yearning is palpable—and so is the belief that one day those memories won’t feel so crushing.—AG  

Best line: “So I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep. And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe”

5. “Getaway Car”

There’s a reason the behind-the-scenes video of Swift and Jack Antonoff writing the “Getaway Car” bridge has become Swiftie lore. It’s exhilarating to watch Swift and Antonoff compose a cinematic bridge with strong storytelling in real time. The song turns Swift into an outlaw running from the heart she broke. In the bridge, Swift takes some responsibility—but also tells her partner he shouldn’t be surprised she ditched him in a motel bar. Try not to have fun belting this (especially when Swift goes full Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan on “when I switch to the other si-i-i-i-ide).—SC 

Best line: “It’s no surprise I turned you in. ‘Cause us traitors never win”

4. “Dear John”

The blueprint for Taylor Swift’s best bridge (more on that later) is all over this Speak Now song, one of Swift’s best breakup anthems, ever. As she unpacks a relationship with an older man (famously rumored to be John Mayer), Swift takes aim at how it feels to be taken advantage of by someone so manipulative and deceitful. In the bridge, Swift crucially reclaims the power she lost, directly calling out this toxic behavior, and rising above it. This is a moment of supreme clarity—impressive for anyone to capture so acutely, let alone from someone so young (Swift was just 21 when this album was released).—AG

Best line: “You are an expert at sorry and keeping lines blurry”

3. “august”

By the time “august” gets to the bridge, there’s an explosion of emotions. It’s the part of the song where, if you’re listening in the car, no matter who you’re with, you turn the volume up to scream, “Back when we were still changing for the better!” The song sounds like a balmy summer day, capturing exactly how it feels to fall in love with someone who makes you feel warm inside, but ends up breaking your heart by slipping away.—MM

Best line: “So much for summer love and saying us, ’cause you weren’t mine to lose”

2. “Cruel Summer”

Is there anything better than screaming the bridge “Cruel Summer” at the top of your lungs? Screaming the bridge while you have a new crush for the summer, maybe. “Cruel Summer” is definitely one of Swift’s sweatiest numbers—a song that is best played on a hot July day as the sun sets and the night has promise of meeting up with someone you’re “just texting,” but that no one knows about yet. The hushed secrets and that hurts-so-good feeling at the start of a relationship is what she’s getting at—that is, until she blurts out her biggest secret of all in the bridge: “I love you, ain’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard?” Truly, the Queen of Catharsis.—RS

Best line: “I scream, ‘For whatever it’s worth, I love you, ain’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard?’”

1. “All Too Well”

It should come as no surprise that Swift’s magnum opus contains her best bridge (and we’re not talking about the 10 minute version). All Too Well is not so much a breakup song as it is an in-depth postmortem on a past relationship. In cutting specificities, Swift holds to the light the seemingly small, everyday moments that come from sharing a life with someone else, revealing how much love can be derived there. While much of the song focuses on these little flashes of memory (the scarf, the twin sized-bed, the refrigerator light), the bridge takes stock of the damage that’s been inflicted in the aftermath. It’s her best bridge because it’s so vulnerable. Her rage and confusion are crystal clear as she questions how everything came crashing down.—AG

Best line: “And you call me up again, just to break me like a promise. So casually cruel in the name of being honest”

More From TIME

There are so many cop shows. So many murder shows. So many shows about innocent dead girls who turn out to be less innocent than they looked. Most are pointless wallows in the suffering of others, real or fictional. A precious few—Twin Peaks, Sharp Objects—transcend the clichés of an overplayed genre through artful storytelling and thematic depth. Hulu’s Under the Bridge, premiering April 17, doesn’t reach the latter series’ heights. But thoughtful, empathetic writing and excellent performances make it more than just another dead-girl show.

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On the evening of Nov. 14, 1997, 14-year-old Reena Virk joined a gathering of teens near a bridge in Saanich, British Columbia and never came home. Under the Bridge adapts, with some creative license, the true-crime book about Reena’s case by Rebecca Godfrey, played in the series by executive producer Riley Keough. A writer who grew up in the area but hasn’t visited in years, for reasons that seem related to her brother’s death when they were kids, Rebecca is here to research a book she’s calling Victoria Girls. She starts poking around the local girls’ group home, Seven Oaks, just in time to get the scoop on Reena’s (Vritika Gupta) disappearance.

Hers is just one of many perspectives through which the show filters the crime. Killers of the Flower Moon Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone co-stars as Cam Bentland, a young cop working the case alongside her adoptive father, Roy Bentland (Matt Craven), a police chief with a habit of cutting corners and intimidating witnesses in order to achieve his desired results. Cam, who is Indigenous and spent part of her childhood at Seven Oaks, dreams of escaping this insular community through a transfer to Vancouver—one she’d be more likely to receive after cracking a high-profile case like Reena’s. Two of the frenemies Reena met up with at the bridge, Josephine Bell (Chloe Guidry) and Dusty Pace (Aiyana Goodfellow), live at Seven Oaks. Jo is the charismatic, mercurial queen bee, a girl obsessed with John Gotti and gangsta rap. Her best friend Kelly Ellard (Izzy G.) rounds out the pseudo-gang they’ve dubbed “Crip Mafia Cartel.”

Under the Bridge also spends plenty of time with the Virks, Jehovah’s Witnesses of Indian descent who are rocked by their daughter’s rebellion long before she vanishes. Reena fights constantly with her austere, religious mother, Suman (Archie Panjabi). After girls at school bully Reena for having hairy legs, Suman walks in on her shaving and declares that caring about something as worldly as what other kids think amounts to “paganism.” Under the Bridge creator Quinn Shephard (Not Okay) makes nuanced use of the Virks’ hybrid identities, contrasting the specific tensions within the household with the blunt prejudices they face in the community where Suman’s side of the family has lived for three generations. The series so effectively establishes this dynamic in the present that an episode devoted largely to tracing Reena’s roots, from her grandparents’ arrival in British Columbia to her parents’ courtship, feels redundant.

It isn’t the only instance where the show gives viewers too much information—perhaps in a well-intentioned attempt to do justice to the true story or the book by Godfrey, who died in 2022. It makes sense, for example, that Cam and Rebecca, who must now collaborate to uncover the truth, grew up together and have a complicated history. But Cam’s own backstory, with her father, has enough details and twists to fuel a miniseries of its own. And the timing of Rebecca’s return to her hometown, with a manuscript that couldn’t be more relevant to Reena’s case, reads as contrived. Under the Bridge can get goofy, too, in its depictions of the author at work. Watching her speak full paragraphs of grandiose prose into a recorder, it’s hard not to cringe.

Fortunately, the show is compelling enough to overcome an occasional silly moment. So many crime dramas from the past decade repeat the same pat takeaways about how race and class intersect with criminal justice systems, but Shephard avoids broad generalizations. She is alert to the specificity of not just Reena’s background, but also the diverse experiences of every other character caught up in her story. Stereotypes turn out to be red herrings, for investigators as well as viewers. Shephard is perceptive, too, about the way discrete social groups interact among themselves: small-town police, parents of various racial and socioeconomic statuses, teenage girls who think they’re tougher and meaner and more gangster than they really are.

The acting is even better than the writing. Gladstone’s Cam conceals a lifetime’s worth of anger—about her own upbringing, about her perennial outsider status—beneath an impassive exterior. Keough makes a wonderful morally questionable journalist, who manipulates Jo and drops acid with teen burnouts, in part because she still has yet to get over her own sullen goth phase but also because she convinced herself, back when she was the suspects’ age, that she is a bad person. The younger actors are just as remarkable. Guidry’s Jo is the kind of girl everyone has met, magnetic and terrifying at once. She’s the sun that Reena, Dusty, and Kelly revolve around, each in her own utterly convincing way. Euphoria’s Javon “Wanna” Walton brings empathy to the difficult role of their friend Warren Glowatski. Through these performances, Under the Bridge subverts our assumptions to make a powerful distinction between what people say, what they do, how they’re perceived, and who they really are.

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