The Best Theme Song On Television Won An Emmy

Game of Thrones wasn’t the only HBO series to clean up at the Emmys.

During Sunday’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Nicholas Britell won for Original Main Title Theme Music for Succession, rightly so. No offense to fellow nominees Castle Rock, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Good Omens, and Our Planet, but Succession — a great show having a great season — has the best theme song on TV, narrowly edging out BoJack Horseman and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Britell (who has also been nominated for two Oscars, for Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk) described the instrumental as “circus-like,” but to me, it sounds like a piano on valium with a hip-hop beat.

“I like the sound of instruments when they’re not perfectly in tune. It’s more interesting, this feeling of humanness that comes through when things aren’t perfect, or when a sound has a subtle sourness to it. I’m always looking for that, but I definitely went to extreme levels with this theme,” he told Vulture. “It was actually the last thing I did for the first season. I had written all of this music, but the final version was something that I waited until the end to do. It was a synthesis of the things I had learned over the course of the show, so I’m glad I waited as long as I did. I mean, I got a sleigh bell in there!”

Tired: cowbells. Wired: sleigh bells.

Anyway, social media lit up with reactions following Britell’s win, which is the first time social media has ever “lit up” over the Emmy for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music. Unlike I’m misremembering Twitter going apesh*t for Godless winning last year.

https://twitter.com/bymeg/status/1173430367321120768

https://twitter.com/morninggloria/status/1173459481285365760

https://twitter.com/barrybIock/status/1173400459291197440

(Via Vulture)