While known mostly for her numerous and diverse acting roles, Michelle Trachtenberg also made a notable impact on Billboard’s music charts.
As reported Wednesday (Feb. 26), Trachtenberg passed away at age 39.
The New York native broke through with, among other early roles, her starring turn in the film Harriet the Spy in 1996, released when she was just 10. By then, she had also made multiple appearances on ABC’s All My Children — working with Sarah Michelle Gellar. That connection led to Trachtenberg joining Gellar on Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 2000 through its 2003 finale. (A reboot is currently in the works.)
When the series shifted from the WB to UPN for its sixth season, fans were treated to one of its most innovative episodes: the musical Once More With Feeling. Most prominently for Trachtenberg, whose ballet talents were showcased that week, she opens the episode’s coda, “Where Do We Go From Here?,” singing the opening title line a cappella.
The 23-song Once More With Feeling soundtrack was subsequently released (on Mutant Enemy/Twentieth Century Fox/Rounder Records). Mirroring the show’s trademark witty dialog (one lyric features singing-averse Alyson Hannigan admitting, “I think this line’s mostly filler”), the set slayed Billboard’s charts, most notably debuting at its No. 3 best on the Soundtracks chart — a year after the episode aired. It also hit the Billboard 200 and Independent Albums charts.
To date, the album has drawn 23.6 million streams in the U.S., according to Luminate.
In 2016, upon the 15th anniversary of Once More With Feeling’s premiere, the series’ Anthony Head — aka Buffy’s slayer sage, Giles — mused about the idea to give the cast something to sing about. “I’d done Chess, Godspell and Rocky Horror before I joined Buffy, and, on the pilot, [creator Joss Whedon], Sarah Michelle and I were waiting in the back of the library set and [Whedon] said he had a huge fondness for musicals,” Head recalled to Billboard at the time. “We said then, ‘If the show ever gets picked up, wouldn’t it be fun to do a musical episode?’ Pretty much every season, for three or four seasons, I said, ‘Are we going to do the musical episode this year?!’”
Head said that Whedon wanted to wait until it felt “organic,” and by the sixth season, after the cast’s vocal chops had been discovered and honed through singalongs at Whedon’s house, and the show’s storylines had been furthered, the timing seemed right. Before the season, Head received a demo of songs from Whedon, who realized at last, per Head, “’We’ve got a musical!’
“It was just remarkable,” Head marveled. “Even in that home-demo stage … the melodies were so strong. It was a great, eclectic compilation of songs. From that moment on, I was like, ‘What can I do? What can I do?!’”