The 1977 Bee Gees classic wasn’t actually the producers’ original pick for the song playing through Wallace’s headphones.
Although fans of the original Dexter never heard many licensed tracks woven into each episode, the revivals changed that idea completely. Starting with Dexter: New Blood, the creative team shifted toward a stronger musical identity. The newer installments (Original Sin) embraced multiple licensed songs across their episodes, using them to build tension, and a stronger sense of atmosphere that actually set the new shows apart from the main one.
Dexter: Resurrection followed the same direction, but it also broke new ground. For the first time in the franchise, the same licensed track appeared not once or twice, but in five different episodes of its debut season. The choice was a song so universal that almost everyone has heard it at least once in their life, even by accident: the Bee Gees’ iconic 1977 hit “Stayin’ Alive.”
The repeated use of the song was tied directly to a new character, Claudette Wallace of the NYPD’s 22nd precinct. Wallace is sharp and a little...unpredictable, and her go-to ritual is listening to “Stayin’ Alive” through her Bluetooth headphones while she works. Whehter she is walking a crime scene or puzzling through evidence at her desk, the same track becomes a sort of personal theme that actually fuels her focus.
Things come full circle in the season finale, when the song is played openly during Leon Prater’s gala. It is that moment when Wallace lets her colleague Melvin Oliva catch a glimpse of a different side of her, along with the beat that drives her confidence. But as fun as that reveal was, the production originally had a completely different song in mind.
Securing music rights can be a tricky process in television, and during a recent appearance on Love It Film, Kadia Saraf, the actress behind Wallace explained that “Stayin’ Alive” wasn’t the team’s first choice. The intended track became tangled in licensing complications, forcing the writers to actually rethink the entire idea. When they regrouped, the Bee Gees classic rose to the top of everyone’s list, thanks to its upbeat energy. According to her, it “just fell into our lap,” and once they made the switch, everything clicked.
Saraf also shared a fun detail about filming those scenes. Despite the character constantly wearing headphones, the actress wasn’t listening to anything during most takes. One exception was the kitchen walk-through in Episode 3, where director Monica Raymund blasted Stayin’ Alive over speakers so the whole room could move with the rhythm. This actually helped the scene feel natural and kept it from happening in silence.
The big question now is what the song that came before it was. Whatever the original choice might have been, we are now left to wonder if it was also a retro classic or something more modern.