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In The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3, the final chapter of Prime Video’s adaptation, the soundtrack rises to its highest stakes. From the very beginning, the show has treated music as more than background. Music is the invisible character at Cousins Beach, carrying Belly’s heartbreaks, betrayals, and moments of discovery. Every track feels like a message in a bottle: some from the past, some from the present, and some meant to close a story that has lived inside fans for years.
Jenny Han has often described the soundtrack as the emotional spine of the show, admitting that she goes out of her way to secure songs that matter. That's why Taylor Swift keeps appearing at the exact moments Belly is too fragile to speak, why Fleetwood Mac’s harmonies haunt scenes of transition, and why Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo enter when Belly’s world feels uncertain and raw. The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 does not simply sound good. It sounds like memory.
The musical architecture of the final chapter deserves careful attention because it works as an extension of the dialogue. Every choice builds a bridge between the character arcs and the audience’s perception. When a song plays, it is not a pause in the story but a continuation of it through another language. This is what makes the soundtrack such a vital component of the series’ identity.
Here's the complete list of every song in The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3, followed by a closer look at how these choices shape the story of the last summer.
Every song in The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3
Taylor Swift as Belly’s inner voice
The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 begins with “You’re Losing Me”, and the heartbreak is immediate. Belly does not need to spell out her anger at Jeremiah because Swift’s lyrics already do it for her. By the finale, “Dress” and “Out of the Woods” carry the intimacy of her decision to be with Conrad, wrapping the series in songs that sound like pages from her diary. Jenny Han has said that she pushed for these tracks because they articulate Belly’s private emotions better than dialogue could.
Taylor Swift is not decoration in the soundtrack. She's structural. Each placement of her songs in The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 reflects Belly’s transformation from indecision into clarity. Fans who follow Swift’s own narratives recognize that her discography already carries stories of heartbreak, resilience, and longing. Embedding those songs inside the series creates an echo chamber of recognition where the audience immediately feels what Belly feels without explanation.
Nostalgia as memory in The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3
Fleetwood Mac, Otis Redding, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison. These names arrive like memories from another life, giving gravitas to the fragility of Cousins Beach in The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3.
When “Landslide” plays, it's not only about Belly’s changes but about the universal truth that youth never stays. When “Wild Horses” and “Into the Mystic” appear, they turn scenes of reflection into elegies for time already lost.
This layer of nostalgia matters in The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 because it contrasts with the present-tense urgency of Belly’s story. The show is speaking to both teenagers watching now and older viewers who remember their own first loves, soundtracked by these artists. By balancing classics with contemporary tracks, the series ties its fleeting summer to a longer cultural memory that stretches across generations.
Gen Z confessions
The newer voices in the The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 soundtrack cut closer to the skin. Olivia Rodrigo’s “lacy” is a portrait of jealousy and fragility, echoing Belly’s insecurities with almost unbearable sharpness. Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” injects wit and defiance into heartbreak, refusing to let despair be the final word. Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” captures the shaky hope of intimacy, while Sabrina Carpenter and Ariana Grande bring confessional pop anthems that expose contradictions in love and friendship.
These songs feel like the ones Belly would actually play in her earbuds, the soundtrack to moments she cannot share with anyone else. They mark the show’s generational pulse, ensuring that the series is nostalgic and immediate at the same time, alive with the same music its audience already claims as their own. This alignment with Gen Z artistry grounds the story in the present while keeping it emotionally raw.
Episodes shaped by sound in The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3
Episode five of The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 leans into pure nostalgia, crowding the dance floor with tracks that feel like childhood and heartbreak in equal measure. The combination of Otis Redding, The Jackson 5, and Fleetwood Mac makes this specific episode feel like a scrapbook of family memories and lost rituals.
Episode six pivots to questions of identity, with “Time After Time” and “False God” pressing Belly to consider who she is becoming and what kind of love she wants to believe in.
Episode seven becomes chaos set to music. BLACKPINK, M.I.A., and Tyler, the Creator make the atmosphere feel unsteady and reckless, matching the unraveling of Belly’s certainty.
Episode nine transforms into confrontation, with “You’re on Your Own, Kid” as the soundtrack to her realization that she cannot avoid endings.
And episode eleven closes as a hymn to closure, mixing French ballads with Swift at her most intimate. Belly’s decision is not only spoken, it is sung into permanence.
Styles and recurring voices
Beyond the expected Taylor Swift moments, season three experiments with a rich palette of genres. K-pop with a touch of jazzarrives through V’s “FRI(END)S”, a choice that signals how the soundtrack embraces global voices. The song’s bittersweet tone matches Jeremiah and Belly’s unraveling bond, and its inclusion reflects the cultural weight of BTS in connecting emotion to universality.
More traditional jazz enters through Bill Evans’ “Everything Happens to Me”, which lingers over a moment of resignation, and is a choice that ties the series to an older tradition of music that confronts disappointment without spectacle, emphasizing quiet vulnerability.
Other recurring styles include soul and Motown through Otis Redding and The Jackson 5, classic rock through Fleetwood Mac and The Rolling Stones, and indie pop through artists like Gracie Abrams and Phoebe Bridgers.
Each style does more than decorate; it speaks to different emotional textures, expanding the show’s reach beyond a single generation or mood.
Why the The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 soundtrack matters
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Music has always been the heartbeat of The Summer I Turned Pretty, but season three turns it into its very soul. These songs are not background; they are narrative devices, the confessions Belly never says aloud. Each lyric, each chord, each familiar refrain is chosen to align with character beats in a way that dialogue alone could never achieve.
By the time the series ends, the soundtrack feels like the last diary entry of Cousins Beach. Swift’s whispers, Fleetwood Mac’s harmonies, Rodrigo’s confessions, and V’s global presence all fuse into a collective memory. The season ends, but the music remains as the emotional imprint fans will carry long after the credits fade.
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