How ‘Heated Rivalry’ Episode 4’s Viral ‘All the Things She Said’ Needle Drop Came Together: ‘Instead of Tripping Out at the Club, You’re Lusting Out’ 

Screen-melting chemistry, endless yearning and passionate sex (lots of it) have made Heated Rivalry, a Crave-produced, queer hockey drama streaming on Max in the States, the final cultural lightning rod to emerge from 2025. 

Comprised of moody indie rock, pounding Russian and French electronic tracks and an original score from Danish rocker Peter Peter, the Heated Rivalry soundtrack, crafted, in part, by showrunner Jacob Tierney, is one of the most unique television soundtracks of the year. “I try to use the music I listened to while writing my scripts,” Tierney tells Billboard, noting Peter Peter’s Ether LP stayed in constant rotation. “I’m from Quebec, and I listen to and love a lot of French pop… [also] I don’t want directive lyrics in there… I just want you to have a feeling.” 

Tierney and Peter Peter’s rich musical soundscape, which they built alongside music supervisor Scotty Taylor, also facilitated the series’ most instantly memorable moment yet: the deliciously anxiety-inducing, t.A.T.u.-soundtracked extended club scene that closes out episode four. 

Illuminated by bisexual lighting, leads Connor Storrie (Ilya) and Hudson William (Shane) miserably go through the motions and perform infatuation with their respective partners in the club — but their unbreakable, magnetic eye contact proves they truly just want each other, even if the physical setting renders that option impossible. As the scene transitions away from the club, Shane and Ilya deliver some of the coldest, most emotionally despondent sex scenes that hinge on their unactionable lust for one another.  

During this climactic conclusion to the episode, t.A.T.u.’s original version of “All the Things She Said” morphs into a dance cover by London-based artist-producer Harrison, which resulted in streaming boosts for both tracks. Following the Dec. 12 premiere of episode four, t.A.T.u.’s original earned over 1.3 million official on-demand U.S. streams during the four-day period of Dec. 12-15, according to Luminate, up 103% from its Dec. 5-8 streaming activity. Similarly, Harrison’s cover jumped an eye-opening 114,173% to over 685,000 official streams during Dec. 12-15. Previous episodes sparked streaming increases for songs by Feist, Wet Leg and Wolf Parade, but this particular needle drop found Heated Rivalry and its showrunner, Jacob Tierney, intentionally wading into a key component of 21^st-century queer pop culture. 

“I don’t know that I thought we would be able to pull it all off based on experience at first,” Taylor admits. “I was concerned, but then we got into a vibe. When it was in our little silo, there was some weird energy that told me I needed to be a part of this.” 

“All the Things She Said” arrived in 2002 as the lead single from Russian music duo t.A.T.u.’s first English-language studio album, 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane. Thanks to a controversial, era-defining music video that depicted a lesbian kiss between the duo’s members, “All the Things” soared to No. 20 on the Hot 100, awakening and emboldening a generation of young queer listeners in the process. As the lyrics “If I’m asking for help, it’s only because/ Being with you has opened my eyes,” reverberate across the club, Shane and Ilya’s mutual yearning reaches a fever pitch. Their longing glances must remain just that, and their inability to act on those feelings offers undeniable confirmation that they’re really, truly in love. 

Already a beloved scene from the novels, Tierney and Taylor ensured their television reimagining surpassed all fan expectations. And given the seemingly endless social media chatter about that scene and the needle drop, they’ve done just that.  

Tierney first reached out to author Rachel Reid, who wrote the Game Changers novel series Heated Rivalry is based on, in 2023 to discuss potentially adapting the books, and by January 2025, Crave picked up the show. Taylor, who earned a Guild of Music Supervisors Awards nod for his work on Megan Park’s My Old Ass this year, says he likes to get into the production process as early as possible.  

“Sometimes you are so restricted by limitations of associated budget that everything becomes a reference,” he explains. “That’s why I like to get the value of music understood early.” He entered conversations about joining the Heated Rivalry team at the top of 2025, having already worked with Brendan Brady, one of the series’ executive producers, alongside Tierney, under their Accent Aigu Entertainment production company. Those preliminary convos evoked Taylor’s favorite “table tennis” vibe — where he, Tierney, Brady and Peter Peter could bounce ideas back and forth. 

Those early conversations confirmed two key things. First, according to Taylor, Tierney was open to having “some awareness” of the show’s timeline (it’s largely set between the very late ‘00s and mid-2010s), but if anachronistic selections like Wet Leg’s “Mangetout” (which opens episode two) “really, really make sense and feel good, they could look left.” Second, “All the Things She Said” was absolutely going to close episode four in some fashion; budget constraints be damned. “Sometimes money makes the decision for you!” Tierney quips. 

“In a rough cut of that [club] scene, once we had the track [temporarily added], we had to figure out how to get across the tension and vibe we were chasing just based on [how long the song was playing],” he explains. “That tension that’s created when we do that… sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s too much of the same song. Because of the tone of this series and this feeling of anticipation, it really works.” 

The six-minute scene is relentlessly intense. With most of the episode’s emotional threads coalescing into a climactic finale, Taylor and Tierney were left with the question of how to stretch “All the Things” for that entire duration. They knew keeping the original for the entire scene might be overkill, so Tierney started toying with different versions of the song. 

“I always wanted to transition there; something had to change,” explains Tierney. “I wanted a clubby song that went into a dreamier state. When I’d be looking up t.A.T.u., I found all these covers [of ‘All the Things’] and I loved that [the Harrison version] was a male vocalist.” 

Once the angst and frustration of t.A.T.u.’s original morphs into the carnal thirst of Harrison’s rework, episode four reaches a queasy emotional place everyone has previously been, but nobody enjoys. Between that energy and the shift from a feminine tone to a masculine voice, which nods to both Ilya’s bisexuality and Shane’s closeted-ness, Taylor and Tierney helped craft one of the strongest musical gut-punches on television this year. Case in point: Harrison’s cover soared into the top 10 on iTunes and the top 15 on Shazam in the U.S. 

“I don’t know that it was a conscious choice, but once we assembled it, it couldn’t go any other way,” Taylor says. “Instead of tripping out at the club, you’re lusting out; Shane’s going home with Rose, and Ilya is overheating. We had to land on an adaptation of [‘All the Things’] that could support the steamiest of steamy scenes.” 

Of course, the queer legacy of t.A.T.u.’s original is complicated by the homophobic remarks from member Julia Volkova — and the fact that neither she nor co-frontwoman Lena Katina is queer, making the duo an OG pop music “queerbaiter.” That history has inspired several viewers to send Tierney messages of disappointment, but, while the showrunner can “understand and appreciate” those sentiments, he’s sticking by his creative decision. 

“I didn’t really know much about [their controversial comments]; this was the only queer Russian pop song I can think of,” he says. “I’m old enough to remember when that song came out, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if those are lesbians, they look like they’re being forced to do this.’ Ultimately, I know how much that song resonates [with] queer people and how impactful it was for a certain generation. And it’s really not easy to license Russian pop music! It was important to me to at least make an effort to do that.” 

With just two more episodes to go before its first season wraps on Dec. 26, Heated Rivalry fans can expect more Easter eggs connected to the novel, a nod to another “special” Montreal band, and the return of Wolf Parade, whose “I’ll Believe in Anything” opened episode three. Notably, “Anything” is one of the songs Tierney made sure he cleared before filming started. Last week (Dec. 12), Crave renewed Heated Rivalry for season two, with HBO Max continuing to license the series for U.S. streaming without producing. With the show’s masterminds already knee-deep in the planning stages for future episodes, fans can expect even more musical offerings connected to the series. 

“We’re definitely in discussions about doing something along the lines of a soundtrack,” Tierney reveals. “And putting together an official Heated Rivalry [compilation] so that people can listen to all the songs they like in the same place, and the score as well.” 

Episode five of Heated Rivalry streams on Crave and HBO Max on Friday (Dec. 19).