'Grey's Anatomy' to Feature All '80s Covers for Remainder of Season 10

ABC's Grey's Anatomy has always been a launch pad for new music, and now the veteran medical drama has embarked on a new tune: modern covers of 1980s hits.

The brainchild of showrunner Shonda Rhimes, the '80s Covers project started with the Feb. 27 season 10 midseason premiere and Sleeping at Last's cover of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

The project continued with Episode 14, which featured four more songs: The Wind & The Wave's cover of Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me"; Sleeping at Last's version of Cyndi Lauper's "All Through the Night"; J2 featuring Cameron the Public's interpretation of Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror"; and Young Summer's rendition of The Human League's "Don't You Want Me."

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And, according to Rhimes and music supervisor Alex Patsavas, the remainder of Grey's Anatomy's 10th season will feature only music from the '80s Covers project.

"Shonda had this idea back in the fall, and we started to talk about songs she knew would make sense with the story," Patsavas tells The Hollywood Reporter. "We started with a couple of songs that she was interested in seeing if there were great modern interpretations for. But at some point along the way, she felt strongly that the way to tell the story in the second half of the season was to use modern interpretations of her favorite songs of the '80s and the songs she felt would tell the story the best."

Grey's has served as a musical platform for emerging artists, including Brandi Carlile ("The Story"), Gomez ("How We Operate"), Scars on 45, Katie Herzig, The National, Feist, Mat Kearney, The Fray and Rilo Kiley, among countless others, all before many had achieved more mainstream success. Carlile's "The Story" also earned a rare Grey's Anatomy music videofeaturing some of the show's most emotional moments, which was broadcast on ABC following a 2007 episode. The song was among those to be included on one of four Grey's Anatomy soundtrack compilations. "The Story," along with eight others, were covered during the show's 2011 musical episode in which starsSara Ramirez (Callie), Kevin McKidd (Owen) and Chandra Wilson (Bailey), among others, covered some of the show's most well-known songs.

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"I called Alex Patsavas with what I worried was a bad idea: I wanted to see if we could find covers of '80s songs. Alex is why I have good taste in music. She creates the pool of music from which I choose songs to go on my shows. I didn't know if this '80sCovers project was a good/tasteful idea or not, but I knew that Alex would know," Rhimes tells THR. "Happily, Alex told me she loved the idea. She then asked me to make a list of songs I wanted to hear covered. I went off and wrote down every '80s song that I ever loved, and I made this very long list. Then Alex did what Alex does best -- she went out and found amazing bands that had covered these songs. She'd email me these zip files with, like, five different artists, each covering the same Whitney Houston song, and I would go out of my mind with excitement. It's honestly become the most fun part of my job."

Theproject started with the second cover of "Eclipse" this season -- an intentional choice and a way to tie in the music with the first half of the season. (The song was featured in episode 12, performed by Jill Andrews.)

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'Grey's Anatomy' to Feature All '80s Covers for Remainder of Season 10