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    How Disney is Chipping Away at Netflix's Dominance

    The cracks are showing in Netflix’s worldwide dominance.Netflix is still king of streaming video, but audiences are slowly shifting toward new rivals, namely the Walt Disney Company’s Disney+, according to research from Parrot Analytics.Netflix’s share of worldwide demand interest — a measure, created by Parrot, of the popularity of shows and a key barometer of how many new subscribers a streaming service is likely to attract — fell below 50 percent for the first time in the second quarter of the year.The company’s “lack of new hit original programming and the increased competition from other streamers is going to ultimately have a negative impact on subscriber growth and retention,” Parrot said in a news release before Netflix announced its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.Netflix said it had attracted 1.5 million new subscribers in the second quarter of the year, beating the low bar it had set when it told Wall Street that it anticipated adding just one million.The company said it expected to add about 3.5 million new subscribers in the third quarter, lower than the approximately 5.5 million that investors were expecting. Netflix shares fell as much as 4 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday before bouncing back a little.The company now has 209 million subscribers, but it lost 430,000 in the United States and Canada, its most lucrative region, over the period. It now has 73.9 million subscribers in that market, with about 66 million in the United States.In a letter to shareholders, Netflix said that “Covid-related production delays in 2020 have led to a lighter first-half-of-2021 slate.” Netflix relies on creating as many different shows and films for as many different audiences as possible, and the pandemic upset that formula, forcing the shutdown of productions around the world.Traditional media players have started to consolidate, again, potentially setting off another race for talent, studio space and production resources. In May, Discovery announced that it would buy WarnerMedia from AT&T, creating the second-largest media giant, behind Disney and ahead of Netflix. Less than two weeks later, Amazon announced that it would buy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, home to the James Bond franchise, for $8.45 billion, a price many analysts considered rich.In the earnings call after the report, Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-chief executive, said he didn’t think it made sense for Netflix to jump into the consolidation game. He even offered his own analysis of some of the industry’s biggest deals, including Disney’s acquisition of the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.“Certainly Disney buying Fox helps Disney become more of a general entertainment service rather than just a kids and family,” he said. “Time Warner-Discovery — if that goes through — that helps some, but it’s not as significant, I would say, as Disney-Fox.”Mr. Hastings’s co-chief executive, Ted Sarandos, offered a sharper critique of these megadeals. “When are they one and one equals three? Or one and one equals four?” he asked. “Versus what most of them tend to be, which is one and one equals two.”Netflix has downplayed competition concerns even as newer entrants have chipped away at its long-held grip. Disney+ more than doubled its share of demand interest in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, and Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV+ and HBO Max are also gaining, according to Parrot.In its letter to shareholders, Netflix said the industry overall was “still very much in the early days” of the transition from traditional pay television to streaming.“We are confident that we have a long runway for growth,” it said. “As we improve our service, our goal is to continue to increase our share of screen time in the U.S. and around the world.”Mr. Hastings said competition would further stoke streaming across all companies.“As you get new competition in, you get validation — more reasons to get a smart TV or unlimited broadband,” he said. “So for at least the next several years, the growth story of streaming as a whole is very intact.”But Netflix hasn’t seen any impact from the “secular competition,” Mr. Hastings said, referring to Disney or HBO. “So that gives us comfort,” he added.Netflix, he said, is really competing against traditional television, and the “shakeout” won’t happen until streaming makes up the majority of viewing. He cited the latest study from Nielsen, which showed that streaming accounts for about 26 percent of television viewing in the United States, with Netflix making up about 6 percent. Disney+ is far behind at 1 percent.In other words: If Disney+ is hurting us, we haven’t seen it.The argument that Netflix has been competing with regular television and other streamers for a long time overlooks the fact that new rivals like Disney+ and AppleTV+ are much cheaper than Netflix (and subscription television). And although those services produce far fewer originals than Netflix, they appear to be getting more bang for their buck.In the second quarter, Disney+ got a big boost of demand interest from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” a series based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has thoroughly dominated the box office in recent years. “Loki,” another Marvel spinoff, also helped, according to Parrot.Amazon Prime Video got a boost in the period with “Invincible,” an animated superhero series for adults. And AppleTV+ attracted new customers with three originals: “Mosquito Coast,” a drama based on the 1981 novel; “For All Mankind,” a sci-fi series; and “Mythic Quest,” a comedy series that takes place in a game developer studio.Speaking of, Netflix said this month that it planned to jump into video games. It has hired a gaming executive, Mike Verdu, formerly of Electronic Arts and Facebook, to oversee its development of new games. It’s a potentially significant move for the company, which hasn’t strayed far from its formula of television series and films.The company called gaming a “new content category” that will be a “multiyear effort” and said it would be included as part of a subscribers’ existing plans at no extra cost. Games will first appear on its mobile app, an environment that already allows for interactivity. The vast majority of Netflix’s customers watch on big-screen televisions.Gaming isn’t meant to be a stand-alone or a separate element within Netflix. “Think of it as making the core service better,” Mr. Hastings said. “Really, we’re a one-product company with a bunch of supporting elements.” More

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    'Black Widow' a Hit in Theaters and Streaming on Disney+

    There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the demise of movie theaters over the past year and a half, and for good reason. Most were closed for at least a few months during the height of the pandemic. Companies like the Walt Disney Company, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia and Viacom have started to prioritize streaming for their films, in part to bolster subscriber interest in their own Netflix-style platforms.Over the weekend came evidence that, at least for the biggest franchise films and with a carefully calibrated pricing strategy, theatrical distribution and streaming can coexist.At least for now.“Black Widow,” a long-delayed Marvel movie, collected about $80 million in the United States and Canada from Thursday night to Sunday for Disney. Overseas, the superhero movie sold an additional $78 million in tickets. That means that, in total, roughly 17 million people went to see the movie in a theater, according to Rich Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm. After giving theater owners their cut of ticket sales, Disney cleared about $98 million over the weekend, Mr. Greenfield calculated.Disney also made “Black Widow” available on its Disney+ streaming service, which has more than 100 million subscribers worldwide. Subscribers could instantly watch the film (and have permanent access to it) for a $30 surcharge. Disney said on Sunday that Disney+ generated about $60 million from “Black Widow” orders over the weekend. Mr. Greenfield said that figure equated to about two million transactions and about $48 million in revenue for Disney after streaming partners had taken their cut. (The benefit to Disney in the form of new subscribers to Disney+ is unknown; subscriptions cost $8 a month.)There are several takeaways. “Imagine being a theater owner and realizing studios need you less and less everyday,” Mr. Greenfield wrote on Twitter. “Leverage is shifting rapidly in the streaming era toward the studios.”On the other hand, the fact that 17 million people decided to leave their bubbles and go sit with strangers in a theater — amid rising coronavirus infections, the result of the Delta variant — when they could just push a button in their living rooms is nothing to sneeze at. For now, theatrical distribution remains a major revenue generator and cannot be ignored if studios want to make money on big-budget spectacles.“This is an extremely impressive theatrical opening,” David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a movie consultancy, said in an email. “Certainly the figure would be higher if every theater were open, if there were zero concern with Covid and if there weren’t a streaming option. For now, those impediments make the ‘Black Widow’ opening all the more impressive.” More

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    Disney, With Benefit Concert, Makes an Early Return to Broadway

    Disney stage alumni will give four performances at the New Amsterdam Theater, two months before the curtains rise on “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” in New York.For the first time in what certainly feels like forever, classics from the Disney songbook will once again — and sooner than expected — ring out from a Broadway stage.The New Amsterdam Theater, usually home to “Aladdin,” will briefly welcome audiences back for four concerts benefiting the Actors Fund in late July, with a handful of Disney stage alumni performing numbers from “The Lion King,” “Frozen,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin” and others.The concert series, “Live at the New Am,” is somewhat of a soft reopening for Disney’s theatrical division in New York, albeit without the more elaborate production elements and massive companies that its stage adaptations typically entail. “The Lion King” and “Aladdin,” along with nearly a dozen other Broadway shows, start back up in September.“We have a concert unit, and we have a theater that’s sitting there waiting to be opened, and so it made sense to ‘what if,’” Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical Productions, said in a Zoom interview from London’s Lyceum Theater. (“The Lion King” is set to begin performances there later this summer, as is “Frozen” down the street.)As of Wednesday, Covid-19 protocols for “Live at the New Am” were still in flux: Disney hasn’t yet settled whether masks will be required. Audience members will need to show proof that they are fully vaccinated; attendees under 12 are exempt but must be with a vaccinated adult. (A couple of blocks away, “Springsteen on Broadway” has similar vaccination requirements but no mask mandate.)The Disney concert isn’t so much a test run of Covid-19 protocols ahead of the September reopenings, Schumacher said, since the latest guidance will continue to evolve. Logistically, after 16 months without an audience, it’s primarily a chance to get the theater’s entire ecosystem back up and running.“It’s very difficult to imagine, just on a practical level, bringing the entire company of ‘Aladdin’ — orchestra, cast, crew, everybody, ushers — all back in the theater and bang, just starting back in with the show,” Schumacher said. “We need the theater to get back up to speed before it starts.”It’s a process that involves reopening the box office, getting ticket-takers and other front-of-house staff back to work and examining the traffic patterns of how patrons move through the building. Not to mention one of the more underrated needs: “To hear laughter and applause and joy in the space is valuable — gives everyone confidence,” Schumacher added. “People need confidence to come back.”For the past decade or so, Disney has staged retrospective concerts of its Broadway hits around the world, from Japan to Orlando, Fla., and even alongside a full orchestra at Royal Albert Hall, in London. Michael James Scott, the most recent (and the next) Genie in Broadway’s “Aladdin,” has performed in several: “I’m telling you, it’s like 11 o’clock number after 11 o’clock number.”Scott is joined in this iteration by Ashley Brown, the original Mary Poppins on Broadway; Kissy Simmons, who has played Nala in “The Lion King” on Broadway; and Josh Strickland, Disney’s original Tarzan on Broadway.There will be three evening performances of “Live at the New Am,” from July 22-24 at 7:30 p.m., and a 2 p.m. matinee on July 25.“It’s a much more intimate feel,” Scott added in a phone interview, “but yet still all of that amazing music that people love.” More

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    In ‘Monsters at Work,’ the Scary Part Is the New Business Model

    Twenty years after Pixar debuted the original “Monsters, Inc.,” Disney+ is bringing a cast of new monsters to the small screen — and putting Mike and Sulley in the managers’ office.You’ve got to feel sorry for Tylor Tuskmon.After finishing at the top of his university class and receiving the business career offer of his dreams, Tylor arrives for his first workday to find that the company’s chief executive has just been jailed. The new leaders have adopted a radically novel approach and no longer need his furiously studied, exquisitely honed talent. He’s going to have to start at the bottom — literally — with the basement maintenance crew. More

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    ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ at 25: ‘The Most R-Rated G You Will Ever See’

    How did the ratings board overlook songs filled with lust and damnation? “Maybe we bamboozled them with gargoyles,” one filmmaker said.They know exactly what they got away with.“That’s the most R-rated G you will ever see in your life,” said Tab Murphy, a screenwriter of Disney’s animated “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” which was released 25 years ago this month.“Thousands of dollars must have changed hands somewhere, I’m sure,” joked Gary Trousdale, who directed the film with Kirk Wise.However it came about, a ratings board made up of parents decided that a film with a musical number about lust and hellfire and a plot that involves the threat of genocide against Gypsies was appropriate for a general audience.Maybe the reason had to do with the studio: Nearly all of Disney’s hand-drawn animated movies had been rated G up to that point. Maybe it was the marketing, which presented “Hunchback” as a complete departure from the dark Victor Hugo novel on which it was based, reframing it as a carnival with the tagline “Join the party!” Maybe the higher-ups at Disney exerted pressure, convinced a PG rating would hurt the box office take. (“It was a G rating or bust,” Wise said.)But the fact that what is arguably Disney’s darkest animated movie earned a rating on par with “Cinderella” reflects the subjectivity of the rating system — and how much parents’ tastes have changed over the years.“PG today is the equivalent of what G was in the 1990s,” Wise said.Trousdale added, “Nowadays, you can’t even smoke in a G film.”But one scene in particular defies explanation.“That ‘Hellfire’ sequence?” Murphy said, referring to the Stephen Schwartz-Alan Menken song sung by Judge Claude Frollo about his conflict between piety and lust for Esmeralda. “Come on, man. Come on.”Talking gargoyles were added to lighten the story.DisneyMURPHY HAD LONG WANTED to adapt the 1831 Gothic story of Esmeralda, a beautiful Roma girl who captures the hearts of several Parisian men, including Quasimodo, a bell-ringer with a severe hunchback whom Hugo describes as “hideous” and “a devil of a man.”But then he realized what he’d gotten himself into.“I was like, ‘Oh, God, I don’t want to write a singing, dancing, watered-down film that turns this amazing piece of world literature into a typical Disney movie,’” he said.But, he said, it was to the credit of Walt Disney Company executives at the time, Roy E. Disney and Michael D. Eisner, that they took a hands-off approach.“I was never told to stay away from this or that or you can’t do this,” he said. “They were like, ‘You write the story you want to tell, and let us worry about our brand.’”Of course, the Hugo novel, in which many major characters die at the end, was “too depressing” for a Disney film. So Murphy had to get creative.He decided the story would focus on the colorful fantasy world Quasimodo imagines while stuck in his bell tower. There’d be a festival. Talking gargoyles. A hero to root for.Instead of Quasimodo (voiced by Tom Hulce) being whipped on the pillory, he’s pelted with vegetables and humiliated at the Feast of Fools. Hugo’s troubled archdeacon, Claude Frollo (Tony Jay), became an evil magistrate. Disney did not want to take on the church, Trousdale said. Unlike in the novel, Esmeralda (Demi Moore) is saved by Quasimodo and the dashing Phoebus (Kevin Kline), the rebel captain of the guards. All three live happily ever after instead of dying, as both Quasimodo and Esmeralda do in the book.But, Wise said, there was always one looming issue they had to deal with: Frollo’s lust for Esmeralda.The screenwriters had to figure out how to deal with Frollo’s lust for Esmeralda. Disney“We knew that was going to be a really delicate topic,” he said. “But we also knew we had to tell that story, because it’s key to the central love rectangle.”At first, Murphy tried to tackle it in words.“I’d originally written a monologue for that scene that was filled with lots of subtext showing that his anger was all about his forbidden lust for her,” Murphy said. “But then Stephen and Alan said, ‘We think that can be a great song.’”Six months later, a small package from Schwartz, who wrote the lyrics, and Menken, who composed the score, arrived at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif. Inside was a cassette with a new song.Murphy, Trousdale, Wise and Don Hahn, the film’s producer, gathered in an office, popped the tape into a cassette player and pressed play — and realized what they were hearing.In a crashing percussive number, Frollo, backed by a choir chanting in Latin, agonizes over his lust and his religious faith and his hatred of the Roma.“This burning desire,” he sings in the film, rubbing her scarf sensuously against his face, “is turning me to sin.” (Schwartz sang the part on the demo.)“I swear to God, everyone’s jaw slowly started to drop open,” Murphy said. “At the end of it, Kirk reached over, clicked off the cassette player, sat back, crossed his arms, and said, ‘Well, that’s never going to make it into the movie.’ And it did!”Initially the filmmakers imagined Frollo’s lust would be subtext. Instead he wound up singing about his “burning desire.”DisneyTHOUGH IT WAS NEVER STATED EXPLICITLY, Wise said a G rating was the expectation.“The studio felt anything above a G would threaten the film’s box office,” he said. “This was before ‘Shrek,’ or movies that made a PG rating in animation commonplace.”A G-rated film, according to the Motion Picture Association of America system, which was introduced in 1968, “contains nothing in theme, language, nudity, sex, violence or other matters that, in the view of the Rating Board, would offend parents whose younger children view the motion picture.” Some snippets of language, it says, “may go beyond polite conversation but they are common everyday expressions.”“We never thought we’d get away with the term ‘hellfire,’” Trousdale said.The first cut of “Hunchback” indeed didn’t pass muster for a G — but it wasn’t the use of the word “hell” or “damnation” that the board took issue with.It was the sound effects.In the “Hellfire” number, imagined as a nightmarish, hallucinogenic sequence, Frollo is tormented by hooded, red-robed figures that reflect his slipping grip on reality.“This burning desire,” he sings, gazing at a dancing Esmeralda figure in his fireplace, “is turning me to sin.”The ratings board was uncomfortable with the word “sin,” Trousdale said. But the sequence was already animated, and the soundtrack recorded, so they couldn’t change the lyric.Then Hahn came up with a solution: Make the “Whoosh!” when the hooded judges rush up from the floor a little louder so it would drown out the “sin.” It worked, Trousdale said.The sound effects seemed to trouble the ratings board more than the language in the “Hellfire” sequence.DisneyBut what ultimately got the film its G rating, Wise said, was a change so tiny that “you’ll never believe this.”In the scene where Frollo sneaks up behind Esmeralda and sniffs her hair, the ratings board thought the sniff was “too suggestive,” he said.“They were like, ‘Could you lower the volume of that?’” he said. “And we did, and it got the G rating.”NEITHER THE POSTERS nor the trailers hinted at the darker themes.“There was definitely a huuuuuge effort to emphasize the lighthearted aspects of ‘Hunchback,’” Menken said, laughing.The film’s tagline? “Join the party!”“Maybe that was the right campaign for the studio to get people in the theater,” Hahn said. “But I’m sure I wouldn’t do that today — I think there’s a truth-in-advertising responsibility that perhaps we overlooked back then.”When the film, which cost $70 million to make before marketing, opened on June 21, 1996, it was a bit of a disappointment at the box office, grossing about $100.1 million domestically. Trousdale said they did get some pushback from parents’ groups about the G rating.“They were saying ‘You tricked us; you deceived us,’” he said. “The marketing was all the happy stuff and ‘Come to the Feast of Fools; it’s a party!’ with talking gargoyles, confetti and pies in the face. And then that wasn’t the film, and people were really pissed off.”Parents’ groups complained that the marketing emphasis on talking gargoyles and other fun elements was misleading.DisneyTom Zigo, a spokesman for the Classification and Rating Administration, which administers the rating system, said that he could not speak about the specifics of the “Hunchback” G, but that it was “very possible” that a movie rated 25 years ago would receive a different rating today.Hahn, Menken, Murphy, Trousdale and Wise all agreed there would be no chance of the film getting a G rating today — or even, Murphy suggested, being made at all.“Disney was willing to take some chances in that movie that I don’t think they’d take today,” he said. “That’s a PG-13 in my book.”Yet the movie has stood the test of time — Frollo, Wise noted, feels like a “very contemporary” villain in the #MeToo era — and remains a favorite among young adults who rewatch and discover references they missed the first time around.“I’ve read posts on fan pages from a few fans in their mid-20s and 30s who were pretty young when they saw this,” Trousdale said. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, this just messed me up when I saw it as a kid, but I still love it.’”Menken said “Hellfire” pushed the envelope more in terms of what Disney does than any song he’s ever written.“Maybe, in retrospect, ‘Hunchback’ was a bridge too far,” he said. “But God, am I glad they took that bridge too far.” More

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    Steve Gilula and Nancy Utley Leaving Searchlight Pictures

    #styln-signup { max-width: calc(100% – 40px); width: 600px; margin: 20px auto; border-bottom: 1px solid #e2e2e2; min-height: 50px; } #styln-signup.web { display: none; } #styln-signup + .live-blog-post::before { border-top: unset !important; } [data-collection-id=”100000007625908″] #styln-signup { border-bottom: none; } LOS ANGELES — One of corporate Hollywood’s most enduring double acts is calling it quits. Steve Gilula and […] More

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    40 Acres and a Movie

    Disney owns a piece of every living person’s childhood. Now it owns Marvel Studios, too. The co-hosts Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris look at depictions of racist tropes and stereotypes in Disney’s ever-expanding catalog. The company has made recent attempts to atone for its past. But can it move forward without repeating the same mistakes?On Today’s EpisodeThe Marvel Cinematic UniverseLetitia Wright as Shuri in “Black Panther” (2018).Disney/Marvel Studios, via Associated PressTeyonah Parris portrayed Monica Rambeau in the 2021 Disney+ series “WandaVision.”Marvel Studios/Disney PlusEarlier this year — during “season three of the pandemic” — Jenna binged the M.C.U., the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While she appreciated the moral messaging of the movies, which are centered on a fight against evil forces, she was appalled by the lack of nonwhite characters. “You mean to tell me they’ve been making these movies for over a decade — 12 years — and you have still not managed to decenter the whiteness of this universe?” she exclaimed.Jenna and Wesley talked about these offerings from the Marvel universe: “Avengers: Endgame” (2019), “WandaVision” (2021) and “The Eternals” (2021).The Disney of Your Childhood and NowWesley and Jenna discussed how rewatching classic Disney movies with adult eyes has been unsettling, from the colonial undertones in “The Little Mermaid” (1989) to the Orientalist tropes peddled in “Lady and the Tramp” (1955).Disney, however, has tried to atone for its history. On the Disney+ streaming service, some older movies, such as “Dumbo” (1941) and “The Aristocats” (1970), contain warning labels about “negative depictions” and “mistreatment of people or cultures.” And one musical, “Song of the South” (1946), does not appear on the platform at all.Still, the labeling effort isn’t comprehensive and seems to address only movies with instances of blatant racism, Jenna noted. “It’s worth interrogating how all of these movies reinforce the ideas that are so harmful in the formation of this country,” she added.In recent years, Disney has started to make movies that feature more diverse casts and story lines, such as “Coco” (2017), “Moana” (2016) and “Soul” (2020). They’ve also remade classics, including the live-action “Mulan” (2020) and a super-realistic version of “The Lion King” (2019).“Moana” (2016) is about a Polynesian girl who embarks on a journey to save her island from destruction.DisneyBlack FuturesJenna mentioned the essay, “Fandom, Racism, and the Myth of Diversity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” which unpacks how Black and Asian stereotypes are employed in Marvel comics.She also pointed to Alisha Wormsley’s art project “There are Black People in the Future,” which began as “a response to the absence of nonwhite faces in science-fiction films and TV.”Alisha’s project gets at the importance of thriving representation in popular culture. “What is on our screens matters so much,” Jenna said, and “has a huge impact on how we see ourselves.” She added: “We have to be able to imagine ourselves whole, happy and healthy in the future for that to be possible today.”Hosted by: Jenna Wortham and Wesley MorrisProduced by: Elyssa DudleyEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Corey SchreppelExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy DorrExecutive Editor, Newsroom Audio: Lisa TobinAssistant Managing Editor: Sam DolnickSpecial thanks: Nora Keller, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani and Desiree IbekweWesley Morris is a critic at large. He was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his criticism while at The Boston Globe. He has also worked at Grantland, The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner. @wesley_morrisJenna Wortham is a staff writer for The Times Magazine and co-editor of the book “Black Futures” with Kimberly Drew. @jennydeluxe More

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    Olivia Rodrigo's Hit 'Drivers License' Has the Best Part of a Song

    Listen and follow Still ProcessingApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThis episode contains strong language.Wesley has made his pick for song of the year: “Drivers License” by Olivia Rodrigo. This record-breaking track makes him nostalgic for his favorite part of a song — the bridge.Bridges used to be a core feature of popular music, but they’ve become an endangered species, right next to the sitcom laugh track.With today’s pop songs increasingly devoid of bridges, how do we form emotional, heart-swelling connections to pop songs? For Jenna, the answer lies in the earthquake that hit the world in 2018: TikTok.Today, we listen back to iconic bridges and look ahead to the new ways TikTok allows us to experience the best part of the song.On today’s episodeA bridge at its bestWesley thinks that “Drivers License,” the debut single from an 18-year-old Disney actress, will be song of the year for one key reason: It’s got a bridge!“What I love about some bridges is you are dropped into the middle of a totally different song,” Wesley said. “And the bridge on ‘Drivers License’ basically does that.”The bridge begins around the two-and-a-half-minute mark, when Olivia Rodrigo starts belting, “Red lights / stop signs / I still see your face in the white cars.”Writing songs for TikTok-ificationIn an episode of “Diary of a Song,” Olivia Rodrigo told the culture reporter Joe Coscarelli that she wrote “Drivers License” with TikTok in mind. Her vision has held up, as swarms of TikTokers have captured the song’s transition into the bridge. “They’re really just playing into the cathartic release that the bridge offers,” Jenna said. “Like, here are the contents of my heart emptied out.”

    @spoiledmel can this be a trend? 😳 ##oliviarodrigo ##driverslicense ##fyp @livbedumb stream drivers license!!!! ♬ drivers license – Olivia Rodrigo Jenna discussed a few other song-based TikTok challenges that have gone viral, including “Buss It” by Erica Banks, “Mood” by 24kgoldn and “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion.“I think what a lot of artists have done, and have really enjoyed doing, is seeing not just where these songs live in people’s bodies,” Jenna said, “but what their bodies do with them and what their minds do with them.” She added, “It is such a vehicle for creative expression, unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.”Jenna and Wesley’s favorite bridgesIn the episode, the co-hosts treat us to some of their most treasured bridges — like the breakdown in Prince’s “Raspberry Beret” and the well-earned apex of “I’m Your Baby Tonight” by Whitney Houston.Here’s a playlist of all the songs mentioned in this episode.Hosted by: Jenna Wortham and Wesley MorrisProduced by: Elyssa Dudley and Hans BuetowEdited by: Sara SarasohnEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Editor, Newsroom Audio: Wendy DorrAssistant Managing Editor: Sam DolnickSpecial thanks: Nora Keller, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani and Desiree Ibekwe.Wesley Morris is a critic at large. He was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his criticism while at the Boston Globe. He has also worked at Grantland, The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner. @wesley_morrisJenna Wortham is a staff writer for The Times Magazine and co-editor of the book “Black Futures” with Kimberly Drew. @jennydeluxe More