Atwood Quartet: The Nashville ties to Netflix sensation ‘Bridgerton’

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — The country’s top television show on Netflix has ties to Music City.

Global phenomenon “Bridgerton,” a regency-era romance based on a popular romance book series, recently released the first part of its third season, continuing the saga of the Bridgerton family in an alternate integrated England in the 1820s. And this season featured the work of a Nashville string quartet, further linking Music City and the City of Angels.

Since the series was first developed by “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” creator Shonda Rimes, orchestral and string covers of pop songs have risen in popularity. Previous covers have included Ariana Grande, Billie Eillish, Madonna, Maroon 5 and more.

Season three included a cover of Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey’s “Snow On the Beach” that was arranged and performed by Atwood Quartet, a Nashville-based group created by Kaitlyn Raitz and Ben Plotnick.

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“The Atwood Quartet has existed in some form or fashion for about four years,” she told News 2. “Ben and I both do a lot of arranging and we like doing collaborations with artists, so that’s when the Atwood Quartet started—as a way to do really cool things with a string quartet.”

According to Raitz, having their music featured in a show with the magnitude of “Bridgerton” has been nothing short of amazing.

The process of getting their cover onto the show took only a few months, Raitz said.

Raitz is represented by a music rights company, Whizbang Inc., who was contacted by the music supervisor for the show, she told News 2. When the show put out a call for music for the third season, Raitz said her company reached out and asked if she wanted to submit something that could potentially be featured on the show.

“We said, ‘Absolutely!'” she said. “I love the show, and I knew that this season was about Colin and Penelope, so I knew I wanted to do something—probably Taylor Swift—so I thought of their storyline, and I thought that ‘Snow On the Beach’ would be a great choice.”

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That song in particular seemed like a good fit for the current season, Raitz said, highlighting a specific line from the “Midnights” song: “You wanting me tonight feels impossible.”

“It’s really a song that fits their storyline perfectly—Penelope always feeling like it’s never going to happen with Colin,” she said.

They received the call to pitch a song on a Wednesday in October, Raitz said, and the company needed submissions by the following Monday, giving them a “frantic weekend” but one that definitely worked out for the better.

“We submitted it, and almost immediately they told us they were interested in it,” Raitz said, but they had to wait to hear if their submission was accepted until essentially the week the season was released.

“We had a good feeling, and we were right,” Raitz said.

“I think, with TV and movies in general, I think music tends to be the last thing [done],” Plotnick said. “It typically is added to the finished product, and then as soon as the music’s added, it’s done.”

“We were fingers crossed for a few months there,” Raitz said of the waiting time between submission and acceptance.

Although Raitz was responsible for the particular arrangement The Atwood Quartet went with for the song, the song is still a product of Taylor Swift’s, so her record label did have to give permission for them to use it.

“All we had to do is record the song, and then the companies and people in the business seats do all the negotiating with the label,” Raitz said. “Her label did have to give permission for the song to be used, and they were really excited when she did.”

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“It’s a nice thing in the industry that writers do have those rights,” Plotnick said, noting Swift gets a percentage of Spotify streams, sheet music sales, and other uses of her music.

While Atwood Quartet will get their own share, Raitz said the new audience is also exciting to have.

“Even more than monetary return from this, we’re just excited about now we have this huge ‘Bridgerton’-Swiftie coalition that has found us on social media, especially TikTok,” she said. “It’s just amazing. I think this is a huge opportunity. The ‘Bridgerton’ era is a huge opportunity for classical musicians, especially string players to kind of take these people who are obsessed with string quartets now and bring them over to a genre of music that they would not have, maybe, sought out before.”

Hearing Taylor Swift music through a string quartet could open up a whole new world of music for Swifties, Raitz said, which was more exciting than the money.

Raitz and Plotnick posted a reaction video onto TikTok shortly after the batch of episodes dropped. Raitz’s raw reaction to hearing her arrangement on the Netflix show has more than 1 million views on TikTok and another 34,000 on Instagram.

“A lot of people watched us watch television,” Plotnick laughed.

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“That was a real reaction,” Raitz said. “I knew, kind of roughly where in the show the song was, so I just put my phone up. That was a very genuine reaction. It was so cool. It’s always amazing hearing yourself play on something as big as that.”

Should Netflix have any other shows in which they want to feature some string quartet music, Raitz said they’re definitely available. “I realize that pop covers in string quartets feels pretty specific, so who knows what else we can do.”

In the meantime, Raitz said they’ll have another pop cover coming out in June—details, though, remain under wraps until it’s released—as well as exploring locations to film music videos around Nashville. Ideally, Raitz said they’ll highlight specific locations they love and “show them off to the world” if they’ll agree to terms.

They’ve also been asked to play a bachelorette party, which Raitz said was a first for them.

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