Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird is her directorial debut, with Saoirse Ronan playing the sarcastic, angsty and semi-autobiographical Sacramento teen looking to break out of the small town hivemind. It’s heavily set in 2002, and required an appropriate soundtrack that illustrates an era of brooding 00s pop.

Gerwig told Seth Meyers on his recent show that she personally wrote to artists in an attempt to gain the music licensing she needed for the film.

“I’d written them into the script, they were very specifically those songs,” Gerwig says. The director wrote to Justin Timberlake, Alanis Morissette and Dave Matthews – and they all said yes. 

Gerwig wrote to Timberlake to get permission to use “Cry Me a River”, which shows up in a “full on makeout” scene. “You were the soundtrack to my adolescence,” the letter begins. “Your rise corresponded exactly with my very awkward puberty”.

In her request to Morissette, she described the moment “Hand in My Pocket” is used in the film. “I have been a fan of yours my whole life,” she says. “The very first cassette tape I ever bought was Jagged Little Pill.”

Read back on our exploration of Gerwig’s directorial debut, a coming-of-age triumph that beautifully accumulates the small life moments of our teens.

Lady Bird will premiere in early 2018 in the UK.