Westworld Composer on Ending Season 4 With Radiohead and What Might Happen in Season 5
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The post Westworld Composer on Ending Season 4 With Radiohead and What Might Happen in Season 5 appeared first on Consequence.
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 4 finale of Westworld, “Que Sera Sera.” To read about the music of Episode 7, click here.]
“We’re finally back to Radiohead,” Ramin Djawadi laughs, at the beginning of our final conversation about Westworld Season 4. “I never actually counted, but I feel like we’ve done Radiohead the most — we’re all big Radiohead fans. So this being the final episode we said, you know, ‘It’s time for some Radiohead now. We need another Radiohead song.'”
As the Emmy-winning composer has exclusively discussed with Consequence all season long, the unexpected twists and turns of the HBO sci-fi drama have often extended towards the music, calling upon Djawadi’s talent for recreating well-known pop and rock tunes using Westworld’s signature sound.
Such was the case for the soaring instrumental cover of “Pyramid Song” (from 2001’s Amnesiac), which accompanies the final moments of Hale (Tessa Thompson) — just one of the events involved as we witness the end of sentient life on Earth. (By Consequence’s count, this is the fifth Radiohead cover of the series.)
For some Westworld covers, Djawadi has said he likes to ease the viewer into discovering that they’re listening to a new version of a familiar tune. But in this case, he says, “The original actually starts also with piano, so it actually is sort of true to the original. Once the vocals and the other elements come in, that’s when I veer off and do my thing with it, but those original piano chords actually should be fairly recognizable.”
When covering this song, Djawadi says, he used strings and a solo cello to substitute for the vocal component, while also including more rock elements than he typically does, including some very electric guitar. It’s a less subtle mix than other covers, but because there was no dialogue in the scene, “it was nice to have the instruments develop there.”
Oh, and if you’re wondering: Djawadi himself played the guitar sections of the “Pyramid Song” cover, as he actually does for many guitar-driven elements of the score. “That’s one of my main instruments,” he says. “So whenever I have the opportunity to use the guitar, there are many times that I actually play it myself — whenever guitar seems appropriate. Sometimes I also like to work with other guitar players, just because every musician obviously has different sounds and different tones and different interpretations, but many times it’s me.”
“Que Será, Será” is a grim yet exciting episode, as we watch essentially the very end of everything take place, with only fragments of humanity left in the wreckage of Hale and the Man In Black (Ed Harris)’s games. One such fragment is Frankie (Aurora Perrineau), who does also get a little more time with the fading replica of her father Caleb (Aaron Paul) — including one moment where Djawadi actively chose to not match the score to the scene.
Westworld (HBO)
As Frankie and Caleb reconnect over their memory of him singing “Que Sera Sera” to her at bedtime, there’s no trace of the score mimicking the melody of the iconic song popularized by Doris Day. “I just stayed away from it,” Djawadi says, just leaving it with the vocals as performed by the actors. “It was just supposed to be separate, more of an intimate thing between the two of them. The score shouldn’t react to it.”
Later, though, Djawadi did tie the soundtrack very directly to Frankie and Caleb, bringing back Frankie’s original theme, introduced back in the Season 4 premiere, to underscore their goodbye scene at the dock. As discussed during our Episode 6 conversation, Djawadi had avoided using too much of Frankie’s theme during the middle portion of the season, to preserve the secret that C was the much older version of Caleb’s daughter.
“With the two of them, it depends on which side we pick — we also have Caleb’s theme, a great emotional theme for him as well,” he says. “So, many times we use that theme, but for their goodbye, I felt it was time again to switch to the other theme.”
Another theme that gets a big epic showcase is what Djawadi calls the Writer’s Theme, tied to the character of Christina/Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), which in this episode accompanies Teddy (James Marsden) and Christina’s balcony conversation. “That theme is more electronic and synthetic — that’s how it started out,” he says. “And then here, it actually becomes actually very emotional, with piano and strings. We haven’t had it in that kind of an arrangement before, as it becomes more sweeping.”
And then, after the final notes of Radiohead, Christina (and Djawadi) bring us back to where things began: A game being played in a very familiar-looking Western world — though this time, the stakes will be far, far bigger. So, as Evan Rachel Wood’s voice-over explains what Season 5 the next game will be, the very original version of Djawadi’s Sweetwater theme plays.
“It very much goes back to the original orchestration,” he says, but following a transition from a theme known as “This World.” “As she’s by herself and as the city is changing, that theme plays there, and then we go into the Sweetwater theme all the way to the end credits. That’s the original — the acoustic guitar, all the instrumentation, that’s how we did it in Season 1. It’s very nice how it bookends like that and comes full circle.”
The full Westworld Season 4 score is now available via WaterTower Music, with a tracklist that includes evocative and fun titles like “Welcome to the Golden Age” and “They Are After Your Hooch” mixed in with the themes and covers with which you’re now very familiar, if you’ve read every installment of this interview series.
When it comes to creating those titles, Djawadi says, “I just shy away from words in general. That’s why I write instrumental music. So my approach is always very simple — I just steal from the great writing of the show.”
As he elaborates, “As we work on the show, a cue sheet gets assembled where every piece has a number and usually a name to it. Sometimes some of those names are taken from key dialogue scenes or, or what the scene is. There are always great phrases in there that I usually try to get to. It doesn’t always match, but I try my best to find good names that kind of make you remember the episode.”
The fate of Westworld Season 5 is currently unknown — at least, Djawadi says he doesn’t know anything at this point. However, he says, “I sure hope it continues, because I love the show.” And while he hasn’t put too much thought into how he might approach the music for a fifth season, he does have a couple of ideas.
“With this being back in Westworld, it would be great to explore all these new themes in that style,” he says. “Because we’ve gone so synthetic in Season 3 and 4, it would be interesting to explore some of those themes, instrumentation-wise, and do the acoustic guitar and the piano [versions] — like what we did in Season 1.”
But also, he fully acknowledges that “if this continues, you never know what the writers have in mind. This could go anywhere. That’s what’s what I find so exciting about Westworld — it’s so open and mysterious. Anything is possible.”
Meanwhile, he’s keeping busy with his next big HBO project: the Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon. “I’m having a blast on it,” he says. “I’m not quite finished yet, but it’s going to be a great season. I really like it — they’ve done a terrific job with it.”
To bring things full circle: Should Westworld get a fifth season, are there additional Radiohead covers that Djawadi would like to tackle? “All of them,” he laughs again. “Every album, all those songs are so great. For that alone, we need another season — because there are more and more covers to be had.”
Westworld Season 4 is streaming now on HBO Max.
Westworld Composer on Ending Season 4 With Radiohead and What Might Happen in Season 5
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