By Zach Collier
Although Netflix’s First Kill was cancelled after just one season, it had enough bite during its brief run to leave a mark on pockets of society. One month in, over 100 million hours of the show had been streamed all over the world.
Us Weekly listed the drama as one of their favorite TV shows cancelled too soon. First Kill resonated with fans because of its Queer storyline; others enjoyed the Black representation; and others went bonkers over the fact that another vampire romance had finally come their way. Me? I loved it because of its representation of Provo music and the lessons we can learn from how that happened.
The theme song for the show is none other than “The Zombie Song” by Provo songstress Stephanie Mabey. Originally released acoustically 14 years ago, it was a cult viral success, racking up several million views on YouTube during the height of The Walking Dead frenzy. But as fans’ initial experience with First Kill, the song has recently taken on new life, rapidly receiving tens of millions more streams online over the course of a wild year for Mabey. Here’s how it happened.
The Story
Felicia Henderson, the showrunner for Netflix’s First Kill and a self-proclaimed music obsessive, was up one night on a late-night Spotify binge after working on her new show.
“It’s time to go to bed. It’s five in the morning,” she said to herself. But when something inside her prompted her to search the word “Zombie” on Spotify, she stumbled across “The Zombie Song” – and Stephanie Mabey – for the first time. “[It] came up and I’m, like, ‘Well, this should be interesting.’ I listened to it, and I’m like, ‘Oh, we will be using this song!’”
Henderson, however, faced difficulties in finding information about Mabey and her song. Determined to secure the track, she dispatched her assistant to track down Mabey and gather any available details. Henderson searched Instagram and YouTube but found no recent activity from Mabey. Eventually, Henderson located Mabey living her life here in Utah and initiated negotiations to include her song in the series. Fortunately, everything fell into place, especially when Henderson realized how perfectly “The Zombie Song” aligned with her vision for the comic book-style First Kill credits.
How did Mabey disappear? And why? In an Instagram post, she shared her side of the story: “I haven’t posted here (or anywhere) in a long time and was pretty resolved to live out the rest of my days as a digital hermit,” she wrote. “But then a wild/highly unexpected series of events led to some of my music getting to be part of the soundtrack for First Kill, 100% thanks to its incredible showrunner Felicia.”
You see, she lost access to her Instagram account at the end of 2020 after being flagged as a bot for saving moodboard images too quickly. “This wouldn’t have been a huge deal except my recovery email was linked to my old website domain, which I’d lost earlier that year after forgetting to update the payment method,” she said. “Before 2018, I’d lived my whole life with undiagnosed ADHD and it always felt like I was running in front of a crumbling bridge, but this was the first time it had fully caught up to my music (mostly because music was the main way I tried to compensate for the things I struggled with everywhere else). There’s a lot more to it and, to be totally transparent… I genuinely don’t know if I’ll be able to engage online in a way that is healthy/good for my brain long-term.”
Fortunately, Mabey was still able to experience a significant breakthrough in her career despite these challenges. In addition to “The Zombie Song,” a new song from Mabey entitled “Why Don’t We Choose Love” was also featured in the show.
So, why am I sharing all of this?
The Lessons
Firstly, I’m a Stephanie Mabey stan. This woman’s second record inspired me to take up the Omnichord, and I played it on my band’s third record because of her. I’ve always felt like she was one of the best songwriters in the scene and never got her due. Now that she has, this massive success deserves to be celebrated and honored. And I really hope the momentum continues for her.
Secondly, there are several very important lessons local artists can learn from this wild process.
Lesson 1: Overnight Successes Don’t Happen Overnight
Yes, powerful corporations like Netflix exist. These corporations have so much money they can literally pick you out of millions of other creators and put you in front of a 100 million viewers and skyrocket you to fame in the blink of an eye. However, opportunities like this don’t happen at random.
Stephanie Mabey had been writing and performing and recording and posting consistently for nearly two decades by the time First Kill happened. She’s released music with her solo project, with Pixel Pony, with Gusto, with EFY. She wrote “Glorious,” which was later overshadowed by David Archuleta’s cover. She grew her YouTube channel organically through her own ingenuity. She worked incredibly hard to earn a living from her art and to have her music noticed and appreciated.
Sure “The Zombie Song” got tens of millions of streams in a matter of months. But it earned millions on its own over the course of a decade before it finally blew up at a larger scale. Mabey was discovered because she made herself worth discovering.
Lesson 2: Your Efforts Are Not Wasted
After getting locked out of her Instagram account after years of tireless (and criminally underrated) work, Mabey took a much deserved break. She made peace with the fact that she’d accomplished a lot, but life was still normal life. She became content with being a “digital hermit” and finding value in living that life away from music and the social media grind.
She could have said, “You know what?! That’s the last straw. I haven’t blown up by now and I’m never going to. I’m done.” She could have torched all of her social media profiles, deleted all of her YouTube videos, and taken everything off Spotify. But she didn’t. She knew the value of her efforts. She knew her art meant something to some people somewhere. Sure, she wasn’t famous. But she’d made an impact.
Stephanie Mabey didn’t let frustration get the best of her. She kept everything up and let it continue to provide value. If she hadn’t, Felicia Henderson never would have stumbled on it for First Kill.
Lesson 3: Mental Health Matters
As someone who was also diagnosed with severe ADHD late in life (at 30 – just last year), Mabey’s comment about “always [feeling] like I was running in front of a crumbling bridge” really hit home for me.
ADHD is both a blessing and a curse. The same superpower that allows me to be happy in 3 bands while running a music magazine and being a dad is the same superpower that makes my keys disappear every morning before work; accidentally delete an entire hard drive; and talk for an hour straight on a date about how Hasbro bought Tonka, fundamentally changed their brand, and ruined childhoods in the process. (No, I did not get a second date).
The thing I love most about this story is that Stephanie Mabey put forth quality, consistent effort for years while both struggling with and harnessing her mental health. When it got to be too much, she took a break. And guess what? Her efforts continued to compound and succeed even in her absence. That’s the remarkable thing about art. Once you create it, it takes on a life of its own.
A lot of creatives end up getting burned out because they’re afraid to step away. In reality, if you want things to succeed, you need to let them rest on occasion. Just like you can’t bake bread until you let dough rise, you can’t succeed if you’re emotionally spent.
Even after the breakthrough, I respect that Stephanie Mabey didn’t just jump right back into the internet. She’s engaging with it on her own terms – as she should.
Conclusion
Musicians can learn a lot from Stephanie Mabey’s example. Although at times it may not feel like your art is making a difference, overnight successes don’t happen overnight, and one day you’ll get your due. Consistent, concerted effort trumps luck 9 times out of 10. Do your best, keep at it, and rest when you need to. When success does come your way, accept it with gratitude and engage with it on your own terms.
Make sure to follow Stephanie Mabey on Instagram and check out the First Kill version of “The Zombie Song” below.