Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd Classics Were Considered for Stranger Things Finale

[Editor’s note: The following contains minor spoilers about the series finale of Stranger Things, Season 5 Episode 8, “The Rightside Up.”]

As millions of viewers witnessed, a couple of Prince songs played a key role the series finale of Stranger Things, but at certain points in the creative process that honor could have gone to Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd.

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“When Doves Cry” and “Purple Rain” were major needle drops in the final episode of the Netflix series, a significant accomplishment in itself considering how hard it is to clear Prince’s music. As music supervisor Nora Felder explained to Variety, there was a specific reason she and Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers went with those two songs in particular.

“The Duffers reached out to me about this before the scene was shot,” revealed Felder. “They’d been going through songs, I think they were asking for ideas from the cast. And they said, ‘This one is a little more tricky because of the way the scenes are going to be set up: We need something preferably from 1987 — but it could be from before — the songs have to be from the same artist; and the first song has to start the A or B-side of an album by that artist, and the second song has to end the A or B side of that album.”

The B side of the album Purple Rain, which topped Consequence‘s list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time, features “When Doves Cry’ as its first track, and “Purple Rain” is its final song.

That all said, Felder admitted that she had floated around the idea of Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd before settling on Prince. “I’m not going to say Led Zeppelin didn’t come up — I tried Led Zeppelin, but it didn’t work because I was thinking ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and it wasn’t a first and a last [track on an album side] situation.”

She continued, “And I thought maybe Pink Floyd with ‘The Wall,’ but I can’t remember if the right song was an ending or not. I don’t know how many times I went through this: One song would work and the other one wouldn’t.”

While neither Zeppelin nor Floyd are active, fans can catch Zeppelin singer Robert Plant on a US tour with his band Saving Grace this spring (pick up tickets here). And if Pink Floyd are more your speed, the world’s premier tribute act, Brit Floyd, has mapped out a 2026 North American run that kicks off in February (tickets available here).

As it stands, Prince’s music has seen a huge increase in global streams thanks to the Stranger Things finale.