The surprising connection between a Minnesota musician and Netflix's "Sweet Magnolias"
MINNEAPOLIS – A Minnesota musician has a big part in one of Netflix's most popular shows. And his success came as a big surprise, even to himself.
Matthew Griswold has always had songs in his head, and in his heart.
"Particularly I remember the first time I heard Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA.' I must've been 2 years old and I remember hearing it in the back of my parents' car, and I heard this voice and I felt like there was so much pain in it," Griswold said.
And pain is a big part of his story. The east metro kid enrolled in the Army. He saw brutal things on the front lines in Iraq. When his service ended, the pain did not.
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"I've lost more, especially close friends, since we've gotten out, since I've gotten out than when I was in."
Like his friends, he has PTSD. Thankfully, he also has music.
"When you come back from deployment and military experiences, where you're exploring some pretty dark feelings, and pretty hard-to-talk-about feelings, and then you learn that, well, at least I can write about them, and then I can sing about them," he said.
He was able to make a living performing in bars. Then, he got a licensing deal, where his songs go into a bank, and TV shows have the option to pick them up.
"I've had good fortune before from decently viral videos on YouTube to some smaller TV shows," he said.
He typically doesn't find out if his song gets picked up until he gets a check. But something atypical happened. While doing a gig, he started getting bombarded.
"Dozens of emails, messages on Facebook, text messages, people asking me, 'Hey, is that your song?'" he said.
Turns out, a song that he wrote in the pandemic, called "Let It Go and Leave it Alone," was in a pivotal scene of "Sweet Magnolias." It's been a top show on Netflix for a month straight.
"I've been telling everybody close to me since I've been doing this that if I could ever get a number-one movie or a number-one TV show to use my song, I'll die happy," he said.
Suddenly, the song he wrote about letting go of pain has a hold on people around the world. He's especially popular in Norway. And now his pain has purpose.
"I used to dream about that as a kid, you know, to touch people in that way. And I think there was a time where you had to be a rockstar to do that," he said. "To think that now, you know, a bar singer from Minneapolis can do it somehow, it's, it's awesome."
Griswold says he's been getting notes from around the world on how his song helped them "let go" of pain. He still does gigs around the metro. The next one is Friday night at 10K Brewing in Anoka.
