Nicholas Britell is the composer of the definitive TV theme tune of the 21st century. The New Yorker’s dizzyingly hypnotic title music to HBO’s splenetic family saga Succession has been described as sounding like “a smashed music box”. When Britell first played it to Jesse Armstrong, the showrunner of the hit TV series greeted it with the words: “Fuck, yeah!”
Yet there’s one thing that annoys softly spoken Britell: the “Skip intro” facility on streaming services, which was brought in five years ago and lets viewers bypass a show’s opening credits. “I am very against it,” says Britell. “TV theme music is incredibly important. It’s almost a show’s DNA identifier. It serves as an overture to bring you in and sets the tone. I think that formal entrée is crucial.”
Robust words from the man whose Emmy-winning, earwormy Succession work, with its gothic strings, cascading piano and skittering beats, is helping to revive TV theme tunes. Britell collaborates regularly with film-makers Barry Jenkins (writing the Oscar-nominated scores for both Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk) and Adam McKay (scoring The Big Short, Vice and Don’t Look Up). But it’s TV music that he’s been “obsessive about since I was a kid”. As well as Succession, he scored last year’s acclaimed Amazon adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. “Every show deserves its own sonic universe,” says Britell. “A soundscape that’s unique and special.”
So why was “Skip intro” invented? We can blame Netflix and data metrics. According to Cameron Johnson, Netflix’s director of product innovation, users were fast-forwarding through the first five minutes of an episode 15% of the time. This suggested that many viewers wanted to whiz past the title sequence. If you’re binge-watching, after all, intros can become repetitive. Johnson himself admits that he often tried to manually spool through the Game of Thrones titles, but got frustrated when he stopped short or went too far.
So, in early 2017, his team consumer-tested a range of names: “Jump past credits”, “Jump ahead”, “Skip credits”, “Skip intro” and simply “Skip”. Users had a clear favourite and “Skip intro” was born, with most rival streaming services following. Where does this leave theme tune composers? Have they grown to hate the little button that, according to Johnson, brings “a little moment of delight to audiences around the world”?
Murray Gold was Doctor Who’s musical director for more than a decade and is a longtime collaborator with writer Russell T Davies, scoring hit series including Queer As Folk and It’s a Sin. He’s none too keen on the button. “It really bugs me because, a lot of the time, people’s default setting is to skip past the titles,” says Gold. “When we watch the American Office at home, I won’t ever let my wife skip. The opening titles are so short and I just want to hear the music.”
Grammy-winner David Arnold scored five James Bond films but also has an illustrious TV CV, having composed the theme tunes for Little Britain, Sherlock, Dracula and Good Omens. He insists that they are a vital part of the viewing experience.
“Take The Sopranos,” says Arnold. “You’ve got that amazing Alabama 3 song Woke Up This Morning, which sets it up completely. I never fast-forward because I’m always happy to hear that tune. It’s the same with Succession. Great theme tunes make you feel anchored in the show’s world. That’s what I try to do with mine: welcome you and prepare you for what’s about to happen. It’s like having the lighting and the heating right in your house when you come home.”
Arnold believes intro-skippers are missing out. “A title sequence is as essential a part of the show as any other,” he says. “If you think it isn’t, you’re…
Read More: ‘I don’t let my wife use it’ – great TV theme tune composers savage ‘skip intro’