Given that it’s got to be a few years since Furman’s own high school experience, Sex Education is a fine soundtrack that stands up well without the show’s visuals – with lyrics that have just the right balance of the melancholy teenage view of the world without slipping into cliché and mawkishness. If you’ve had trouble keeping up with Furmanthe prolific punk-folker who’s released several intimate, incendiary albums during the last few yearsSex Education serves as a perfect introductory class. For the soundtrack, Furman looked to her experience of remaining closeted during high school, using the score as a place to put my tenderness, my sadness and longing. Read more: The inexorable rise of vinyl soundtrack releases.
Elsewhere there are covers of the Clovers’ doo-wop classic “Devil or Angel” and Melanie’s “Good Book”, and even a fine take on LCD Soundsystem’s “I Can Change”, as well as a few retreads from Furman’s own back catalogue. Bella Union is releasing Ezra Furman’s soundtrack to Netflix series Sex Education, this January. Sex Education Season 3 Soundtrack (Netflix 2021) Best songs and music from seasons 1, 2 and 3 of the Netflix TV Show Missing: Ezra Furman - Little World, Bedside, Devil or Angel, Early Rain, Amateur, Care.
Instead of punk rock sounds, Sex Education is far closer to the acoustic guitar-driven, Laurel Canyon school of singer songwriters in its approach, especially on tunes like “Splash of Light” and “Every Feeling”. In fact, fans of Furman’s recent, more riotous Twelve Nudes may be surprised by her musical direction on this album more generally. Instead, this soundtrack is made up tunes from Ezra Furman that are stylistically rooted deep in the 1960s and 1970s – even going so far as to resurrect Bo Diddley’s a shave and haircut and two bits groove from the Fifties, for the lively “At the Bottom of the Ocean”. Each episode begins with an appropriate mood-setter, and key character moments are typically accompanied by billboard hits from the past. Similarly, the album is distinctly short of modern youth-orientated sounds, with a complete dearth of grime, drill, hip hop or autotuned R’n’B. The Sex Education season 2 soundtrack features numerous original songs by American musician Ezra Furman, along with retro classics that capture the spirit of the show's UK subjects. That said, it doesn’t actually include such classics as Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” or Generation X’s “Dancing with Myself”, which have both featured among a rich treasure of tunes that must have been new to the show’s target audience.