The story behind the “Gilmore Girls” theme song is so beautiful it’ll melt your heart
Today is the day! Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is finally here! While we’re warming up for our binge-watching session, we’ve had our hearts melted by this beautiful story behind the Gilmore Girls theme song.
Now, we know that Carole King co-wrote the original version of “Where You Lead” with Toni Stern. The track appeared on her iconic 1971 album Tapestry. Writing an essay for The Talk House back in May this year, King’s daughter, Louise Goffin, explained how her mother had distanced herself from the song due to its “stand by your man” themes. She also explained how she re-recorded the track with her mom.
However, in an interview with Buzzfeed News, Goffin has opened up even more about the experience and it’s totally heartwarming.
“Gilmore Girls was not even more than a pilot being made at the time,” Goffin recalled. “[My Mom] called up and said, ‘Some friends of mine are making a pilot about a mother and a daughter and they asked me if I would sing my song ‘Where You Lead’ with you.’”
Those friends, of course, were Amy Sherman Palladino and her husband Dan. While King turned down the offer to score the whole show, she did agree to re-write some of the lyrics of the song to better fit the mother and daughter relationship of Lorelai and Rory.
As Goffin explained in her essay, they recorded the new version of the song in her former home in Laurel Canyon.
“I was recording the song with my mother, the father of my child was producing that track, and I was in a house that used to be my home,” she explained. “It was a nice experience to do it that way.”
Goffin went on to say that while her mother was singing the song she began to see it as a track between a mother and daughter and less about a woman and a man.
OMG – too cute.
“The footage they have in the opening sequence where [Lorelai and Rory] are on the porch in one scene and Rory lays her head down on Lorelai’s shoulder, that really captures the song,” Goffin said. “It’s a very good fit for the show and I think they work together as a whole.”
In fact, Goffin (along with her mother, Carole King,) was invited to take part in the show’s revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.
“The show is so human and so real,” she said. “I think it will reach a whole new generation of people.”
Okay, this has hit us RIGHT in the feels. Not only do we ADORE the story of how Goffin re-worked the song with her mom, but we also love the fact that for both of them it took on a more personal and resonant meaning. The power of Gilmore Girls.
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is available on Netflix RIGHT NOW.
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