Abhiroop Das
Helmed by Karyn Kusama, ‘Jennifer’s Body’ journeys alongside two friends whose lives change overnight after a bar concert gone wrong. The introverted Anita “Needy” Lesnicki is best friends with the most popular girl in her school, Jennifer Check, but constantly feels insecure. When the duo goes to a bar to hang out, they come across a concert by an indie band known as Low Shoulder. It doesn’t take long for Jennifer to hit it off with the band. When a fire unexpectedly breaks out in the bar, she is separated from Needy and taken in by the band. In a flash, things go terribly south as Jennifer returns in an uncannily supernatural form, determined to take revenge. Throughout all of this, Low Shoulder keeps growing in popularity, with its songs running complementary to Jennifer and Needy’s storyline.
Real Musical Artists Help Bring the Fictional Band of Low Shoulder to Life
Low Shoulder is a fictional band created by Diablo Cody specifically for the world of ‘Jennifer’s Body.’ While the movie is expressly about the friendship between Jennifer and Needy, Low Shoulder is what gets each major plot beat going. For director Karyn Kusama, music is at the heart of the story, which makes the creation process of the band all the more important. In a conversation with Movies Online, she revealed that most of the bands we see in this film, whether in the form of posters or as actual performers, were completely invented from scratch. In relation to them, Karyn described the movie as a youth movie, one that lets musical notes characterize the journey.
While Low Shoulder may be fictional, many of its performances link back to real-life music artists and bands, who don fictional garbs to perform as its members on-screen. While actor Adam Brody steps in as the band leader, Nikolai Wolf, he doesn’t actually sing in the movie. Instead, musical artist Ryan Levine lends his voice to Nikolai while simultaneously performing as a band member in the movie. Levine’s former bandmate, Sal Cortez, also plays a role in the film, taking charge of the drums. Notably, both Levine and Cortez were bandmates of the rock band Wildling, formerly known as Test Your Reflex and No Country. However, in the movie’s credits, most of the songs are credited to Low Shoulder, which shows just how deeply the artists were involved with the project.
Adam Brody Learned How to Play the Movie’s Most Iconic Songs on Guitar
Initially, the crew wanted a real singer to play Nikolai and was considering popular artists like Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, and Chad Michael Murray of One Tree Hill. However, it’s unlikely that any of these classic bands served as the inspiration for Low Shoulder, given how the story unfolds. Instead, it’s more likely that Diablo Cody and her team drew partial references from a collage of real-life bands and musical groups, all of whom formed the rough idea for how an indie band might look or feel.
In his conversation with The Ringer, Adam Brody described his character as somewhere between the rock band Fall Out Boy and musical artist Brandon Flowers, who is the co-founder of the band The Killers. Before stepping into the role, Brody considered voicing Nikolai himself, but eventually changed his mind. “My singing voice is still going through puberty,” he joked in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, before elaborating, “They gave me a singing lesson or two, and it’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s not anything anyone would choose to hear.” When Ryan Levine and his team joined the movie, Brody quickly learned the song on guitar with their help. As such, the classic songs we see on screen, be it “Through the Trees” or “One More Night,” are brought to life by a blend of creative efforts.
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