Instead of its usual spring debut, Game of Thrones won’t be back until next summer due to, as HBO’s president of programming Casey Bloys puts it, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss feeling “that the storylines of the next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing.” That’s the bad news. The even worse news? It’s an abbreviated season, with only seven episodes rather than the traditional ten.
That means we only get to enjoy TV’s best opening credits — non-Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt division — just over half a dozen times. That is not nearly enough times. I mean, you could always re-watch old episodes, or put Ramin Djawadi’s stirring theme song on your iTunes, but it’s not the same as seeing the “vast and intricate masterwork of detail, with the ability to elicit emotion from viewers with a single sigil on a certain building.” Thankfully, Jimmy Kimmel knows our pain, so he asked the Tony and Emmy Award-winning Kristin Chenoweth, of Pushing Daisies fame, to sing the theme on Live.
Her cover — which she’s performed before as part of her vocal warm-ups — is appropriately epic, although she doesn’t include any lyrics. Probably because there’s no topping the “Peter Dinklage” version. (I miss Game of Thrones.)
