Why Daisy Jones and the Six chose a Patti Smith track as its theme song

"She is benediction, she is addicted to thee..."

Thus begin the opening strains of the theme song to Daisy Jones and the Six, a show set in and about the making of 1970s California soft rock. The words very well could be about Daisy (Riley Keough) and her complicated professional and personal relationship with the Six frontman, Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) — but Billy and Daisy are fictional, first created by author Taylor Jenkins Reid in 2019.

These lyrics are from "Dancing Barefoot," a Patti Smith song recorded in 1979, which might surprise viewers expecting one of the original songs created for the show to open the series.

"We talked about wanting to kick off the series with something that represents the show but is outside the show," showrunner Scott Neustadter tells EW. "That was the song that I thought would work the best. I came up with it really early and then spent the next six or seven months trying to beat it. I could never beat it. It's too perfect."

Pete Still/Redferns; Lacey Terrell/Prime Video Patti Smith; Riley Keough as Daisy Jones

We can't deny that the words feel like Smith traveled in time and wrote a song about Daisy Jones (or more likely, Reid, in drawing from Smith and other 1970s rock goddesses like Stevie Nicks and Linda Ronstadt, wrote a woman who matched these words).

"I'm dancing barefoot/ Heading for a spin/ Some strange music draws me in/ Makes me come on like some heroine," ends the bit of the song that comprises the theme song over the opening credits. And that is Daisy Jones in a nutshell.

"It's so spot on and it's telling the story by not telling the story," adds Neustadter. "It has a lot of drama to it. It's a perfect TV theme song. We kept the Six songs to not be spoilers. Because they sound very different in the first episode than they do in the tenth. They have to go on that journey before you hear that sound, so that was the reason why."

The first three episodes of Daisy Jones and the Six are now streaming on Prime Video. New episodes drop Fridays.

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