The Boys universe has the subtlety of a man draped in an American flag cape, and that extends to its soundtracks.
Jack Quaid’s Hughie is a classic rock fan (especially Billy Joel), and the series has a similar Gen X musical palette. That’s not to say the show only pulls out 70s/80s hits — there are some songs recorded this century as well.
The Boys and spin-off Gen V can use needle drops, whereas their comic book origins could only settle for onomatopoeia lettering. These superhero series never miss a chance to drop a banger to elevate the scene, with the music choice often reflecting both shows’ dark, sick humor.
Here are our rankings for the 15 best needle drops on The Boys and Gen V:
15. “God Save the Queen” by The Sex Pistols (The Boys Season 4 Episode 1)
The Boys Season 4 Episode 1, “Department of Dirty Tricks,” opens on an election night victory party as head-popping superhuman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) becomes the Vice President-elect.
All that stands between her and the Oval Office is her running mate “Dakota” Bob Singer (Jim Beaver), keeping his head on his shoulders.
Neuman is reintroduced to the audience with the Sex Pistols’ rendition of “God Save The Queen.”
The punk band spun the British national anthem into lyrical venom about the British state and monarchy. Deploying it at Neuman’s election brilliantly reflects how she’s closer than ever to power and that she’s no friend of the people who elected her.
14. “Roar” by Katy Perry (The Boys Season 1 Episode 6)
The Boys reserves its harshest satire for the political right but it’s nothing less than scathing when it criticizes Rainbow Capitalism.
(Corporations pretending to be socially conscious/progressive but changing nothing but their branding — Vought International is a frequent offender.)
After Starlight (Erin Moriarty) confirms the Deep assaulted her, The Boys Season 1 Episode 6, “The Innocents,” Vought proposes capitalizing on Starlight’s new image by marketing her as a champion of other survivors.
The proposed ad campaign is composed to Katy Perry’s “Roar,” a pop song choice perfect for Vought’s superficial feminism. (Using “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten, the anthem of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, may have been too on the nose.)
13. “Wannabe” by The Spice Girls (The Boys Season 1 Episode 4)
Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher may be a ruthless CIA operator turned vigilante, but he’s also a fan of teen pop group the Spice Girls (it’s the British connection).
On The Boys Season 1 Episode 4, “The Female of the Species,” Butcher uses the Spice Girls as the central analogy for how the boys work best as a team, not individually.
This pays off when The Deep, tired of feeling useless, decides to rescue a dolphin from an aquarium with “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls playing. Beneath the nonsensical lyrics, “Wannabe” is a song about unbreakable friendship bonds, and the Deep feels kinship with the sea life he can talk to.
Unfortunately, some careless driving sends the dolphin right into the path of a trailer truck. The Deep plays the part of a supe, but at best, he’s a wannabe at being a genuine hero.
12. “Celebrity Skin” by Hole (Gen V Season 1 Episode 1)
On The Boys, superheroes are just celebrities, like actors and pro-athletes playing dress-up in public. So Gen V — about superheroes in training at the fictional Godolkin University — pushes these youngsters to claw away at each other to ensure they make it big.
So, ending Gen V Season 1 Episode 1, “God U,” with the needle drop that is Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” (that carries over into the credits) is a great final note to end on.
The song is about how, in Hollywood, performing doesn’t stop when you step away from the cameras; people (especially women) who want to make it big have to present themselves and make themselves up a certain way.
The show touches on these themes throughout the first season as these fame chasers face life-or-death stakes.
11. “Heads Will Roll” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Gen V Season 1 Episode 7)
I believe that so long as it’s done in moderation, picking low-hanging fruit in your writing isn’t something to be ashamed of.
The Boys agrees with me (well, maybe not the moderation part).
On Gen V Season 1 Episode 7, “Sick,” Victoria Neuman stops by God U and gets her hands on the supe-killing virus being developed on campus. To cover her tracks, she kills the scientist who handed it off to her in the episode’s final scene before the show cues up “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the credits.
Honestly, I can’t believe either show waited that long to tie that song to Neuman’s mind-blowing powers — the first lyric is literally “Off with your head.”
Despite its dance party rhythm, the song’s title refers to incoming violence, making it ominous given that Neuman has leveled up as a threat.
10. “Sympathy for the Devil” by The Rolling Stones (The Boys Season 2 Episode 1)
A major thread of The Boys Season 1 was Homelander (Antony Starr) engineering events to get himself and other supes involved in national defense — including giving out superhuman serum Compound V to terrorists.
The Boys Season 2 Episode 1, “The Big Ride,” opens with that plan put into action, showing the silent and mysterious Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) single-handily taking out a terrorist cell.
The montage is scored to the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” The song’s boppy beat flows well with repeated shots of Black Noir dismembering his targets.
A song about the Devil introducing himself and demanding respect even fits thematically: America’s enemies are all getting their first taste of what fighting ruthless supes looks like.
9. “Dream On” by Aerosmith (The Boys Season 2 Episode 5)
Homelander’s romance with the alt-right super star Stormfront (Aya Cash) is central to The Boys Season 2.
At the end of the first season, Homelander kills his oedipal maternal figure, Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue), and, thanks to Stormfront, realizes he can never be happy with one of the “mud people” by his side.
Their relationship culminates on The Boys Season 2 Episode 5, “We Gotta Go Now,” where they share some rough sex in Homelander’s apartment. (“Rough” means half-demolishing the room by throwing each other around, and Homelander uses his heat vision to burn a giddy Stormfront.)
The sequence is scored to Arrowsmith’s “Dream On” — a song that builds from slow whispers into excited screaming and has the perfect sense of building climax for a sex scene, even one as vile as this one.
8. “Maniac” by Michael Sembello (The Boys Season 3 Episode 8)
Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) gets some of the most memorable musical moments across the third season.
On The Boys Season 3 Episode 4, “Glorious Five-Year Plan,” she kills some mobsters set to a Russian-language cover of “I Will Survive.” The Boys Season 3 Episode 5, “The Last Time to Look on This World of Lies,” has a full-on musical dream sequence with her and Frenchie (Tomer Capone).
However, the show saves her best moment for last. On The Boys Season 3 Episode 8, “The Instant White-Hot Wild,” Kimiko fires up her iPhone and earbuds to fight some Vought goons. She chooses Michael Sembello’s “Maniac” (most famous for the training montage from 1983 film Flashdance).
Watching her tear through the men, you’ll understand the excellence of the choice.
7. “Hazy Shade of Winter” covered by The Beautiful Distortion (Gen V Season 1 Episode 6)
Gen V Season 1 Episode 6, “Jumanji,” pulls back the curtain on what secretive Godolkin University Dean Indira Shetty (Shelley Conn) is up to.
She oversees “The Woods,” designing a virus lethal to superheroes. When one of her subjects dies, she looks over to the project’s lead scientist and reveals the depth of her ambitions with one question: “Now can you make it contagious?”
Smash cut to credits scored to Simon & Garfunkel’s “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” covered by The Beautiful Distortion. The cover amps up the rock energy of the original into a full-on headbanger, making it a perfect song for sustaining the bombshell energy of Shetty’s final cut.
The song’s lyrics are about looking around yourself and considering the life you’ve lived, but Shetty is deadset on the path she’s chosen.
6. “Old MacDonald Had A Farm” (The Boys Season 4 Episode 5)
This one’s a pure gag song, but you have to respect it.
On The Boys Season 4 Episode 5, “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son,” the team tracks down the farm lab where Neuman sent her samples of the supe-virus, and Butcher wants to get his own hands on it. While there, they face some animal test subjects — some terrifying V-ed-up, flying, man-eating sheep.
Once the episode reaches its credits, it comically drops into the musical nursery rhyme “Old Macdonald Had A Farm.”
That song can go on for a long time, depending on how inventive the singer is in describing the cattle. Even so, I don’t think “killer sheep” have ever made their way into the child anthem before.
5. “London Calling” by The Clash (The Boys Season 1 Episode 1)
“London Calling” by The Clash is a song about nuclear armageddon, not a tribute to the capital of England.
Despite that, it’s often used as a needle drop for British characters. Billy Butcher is aggressively cockney, but when The Clash call out to him, it’s played more subversively.
The Boys Season 1 Episode 1, “The Name of the Game,” climaxes with Hughie being ambushed by the invisible supe Translucent (Alex Hassell). Cue Butcher crashing his car into the electronic shop where Hughie works his dead-end job, grabbing a crowbar, and attacking Translucent.
“London Calling” sounds out, suggesting to the audience they’re in for some Butcher beatdown. Nope! Translucent still has superpowers and kicks Butcher’s ass. Once he does, the song stops, too.
4. “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways (The Boys Season 1 Episode 2)
The needle drops on The Boys reflect the show’s bleak sense of humor and often settle for songs that directly reflect what just happened onscreen.
The best (and funniest) example of that is on The Boys Season 1 Episode 2, “Proper Preparation and Planning.”
Carrying on from the pilot, the Boys must find a way to dispose of Translucent. Since his skin is diamond-hard, Frenchie suggests sticking a bomb up his rectum (since his inner organs will be a lot softer). Hughie, committing himself to his new life, is the one who detonates the explosion.
Cue “Cherry Bomb” by 1970s all-women rock band the Runaways.
That song isn’t really about explosives, but rather nicks the term “cherry bomb” as a pun-ny reference to bandmate Cherie Currie. On The Boys, though, the obvious meaning is usually the correct one.
3. “Rapture” by Blondie (The Boys Season 3 Episode 4)
Ok, this is cheating a bit since this one is diegetic music sung by one of the characters — but it’s one of the most memorable musical moments on the show, so I’m counting it.
The Boys Season 3 Episode 4, “Glorious Five-Year Plan,” opens with MM (Laz Alonso), who has a bitter history with Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). “Reading up” on his adversary, MM watches Soldier Boy’s guest appearance on the real life 1980s singing show Solid Gold.
Soldier Boy sings “Rapture” by Blondie. Well, barely singing, more just reciting the lyrics.
His lack of intonation underscores how nonsensical the lyrics of the song are — which makes the bit even funnier. So does performing (dancing and all) in full costume, including his helmet. Disappointingly, the episode itself doesn’t show the whole song, but it was later released online.
2. “Boys Wanna Be Her” by The Peaches (The Boys Season 2 Episode 8)
Vought’s tagline, “Girls Get It Done,” mocked the hollow “feminist empowerment” scene on Avengers: Infinity War, where all the women superheroes charge at the villains together.
The show is not anti-feminist, though, and The Boys Season 2 Episode 8, “What I Know,” proves that.
Starlight, Kimiko, and Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligot) kick the ever-living hell out of Stormfront together. After Maeve sucker punches her, “The Boys Wanna Be Her” by The Peaches kicks in, every note of the song punctuated with an onscreen punch. The title of the song feels extra appropriate, given the title of the show.
The needle-drop ends before the song gets really lyrical, but the instrumentals are all the scene needs.
Frenchie, staring at the scene, declares, “girls do get it done” — especially when it comes to punching Nazis. There’s a reason Tell-Tale TV ranked this beatdown as one of the top moments on The Boys Season 2.
1. “The Passenger” by Iggy Pop (The Boys Season 1 Episode 1)
Homelander’s scariest scene is still where he bungles, stopping a plane hijacking, and decides to let the passengers die so no one reports his screw-up.
He gets a terrifying plane scene even before that though on the final scene of The Boys Season 1 Episode 1 “The Name of the Game.”
After learning the Mayor of Baltimore knows about Compound V’s existence, Homelander follows his private jet and lasers it in half. This is extra shocking because it is the first time Homelander is shown doing something evil; it was even suggested earlier during the episode that he’s the rare exception to supe depravity, but nope!
What song plays on the close-up of Homelander’s stormlit face? Iggy Pop’s “Passenger,” a bouncy folk song about enjoying the sights. It’s not a song easily associated with mass murder, but it does promise the viewers that The Boys is about to take them on a wild ride.
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New episodes of The Boys Season 4 drop Thursdays on Prime Video.