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You're listening to Song Exploder, where

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musicians take apart their songs and piece

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by piece tell the story of how they were made.

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I'm Rishi K. Shihirwe.

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Just a quick note before we start, since this is an

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episode about a TV show, you

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know, Song Exploder is a podcast about

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creativity. We stand with the WGA

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and SAG-AFTRA and the creativity

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that those unions support.

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Okay, here we go. The

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skip intro button first got introduced

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to us through Netflix in 2017, and I know

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a lot of people use it, including me. But

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if I can get into old man back

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in my day mode for a second, I have

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so much fondness for the opening theme music

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for so many shows. It's a chance

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to set the mood for everything that you're about to see. One

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of the intros that I never skip is the

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animated opening title sequence for Only Murders

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in the Building, which is a Hulu show

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that debuted in August 2021 and now is in its third

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season. It was created by Steve Martin

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and John Hoffman, and it stars Steve

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Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez.

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The three of them play neighbors who live in the same

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building in New York, and they're all obsessed with

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the same true crime podcast. And

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then when someone in their building gets murdered,

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they decide to start their own true crime podcast

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and try and solve the mystery of who the killer

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is. For this episode, I

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talked to composer Siddhartha Khosla about

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the show's theme music. Coming

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up, you'll hear a voice memo that Siddhartha

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recorded before he'd ever even heard about the

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show, which then led to a demo that you'll

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hear, and then eventually the final

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theme.

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My name is Siddhartha Khosla, and I'm

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the composer for Only Murders in the

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Building. I

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had spent six seasons

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working with Dan Fogelman,

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who... who created This Is Us. Dan

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reached out to me and said, hey, I want to get you

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in touch with John Hoffman, who's going

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to be running the show and co-created

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Only Murders with Steve Martin. Let's

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just see if you guys hit it off. And

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in the meantime, I'm going to send you a script and

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see what you think. And it totally

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blew me away. It was funny, it was

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dramatic, it was deeper than sort of your

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normal comedy. I

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wrote a note back to Dan, Only Murders

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is Magic. And that led to my

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meeting with John Hoffman.

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Okay. Okay.

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We were firmly in the pandemic

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at that point. And

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a lot of productions had stopped for

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this period. And I

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decided to write my own sort of instrumental

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classical record. I'm

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not a classically trained musician. I grew up

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singing as a kid, like old Hindi songs.

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I was in a band. I don't have the

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classical music chops. And

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so I wanted to start writing

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so I could also get over

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that hump, any insecurity that

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I have about my own ability.

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And so I wrote all this

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music

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over a two or three month period

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while everything stopped. And I

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played some of that stuff for John in my meeting

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on the piano.

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I just noodled and played a

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couple of things. He

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was like, this is exactly the tone of my show.

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That's my main theme right there. And I

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was shocked. I was like, really? I was like, that

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can't be it, John. He's like, no, that's it. It

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makes me feel happy. It makes

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me feel sad. I feel

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mystery. I feel comedy. I feel

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intrigue.

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It feels very New York to me, and

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I want you to finish it. This

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is really a story about three

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disparate souls that live in

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an apartment building in New York City. It's

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three people trying to find connection, three

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people who are also incredibly lonely in

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their own way. And this

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podcast that they create, it's really

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about their emotional connection. And

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so if I score the music based

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on that underlying

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need for connection,

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then it sort of makes the mystery

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and the drama that much more powerful

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when you see it unfold.

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Old Hindi music, music

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my parents brought to this country when they came here,

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and I lived in India as a kid. If you

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listen to that music, it's all about the melody.

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And so I grew up dreaming in melody

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and thinking in melody and writing in melody. So

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this had that.

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It

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was also a very Indian melody. I

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could sing it with Indian inflection.

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You could do stuff like that if you wanted to to it. So

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the vocals that you hear

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are my vocals.

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And then there's a melotron that

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I use.

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It's

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a digital melotron. It's like it's got these Beatles-y

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sort of like sounds to them.

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I also was proud of the chord changes

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in there. Each

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phrase ends in the major

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or minor version of the song. of

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the next chord that follows.

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So like the first phrase

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ends on G major. And

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right after that G major, I go to G minor.

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And then D major to D minor.

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It's an odd switch and

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it becomes unsettling for a moment.

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I'm also playing flute.

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The flute was the first instrument I ever played. And

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so I have one sitting around and when

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I can, I just take it out and I just do stuff

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like that where I can color something.

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And it was all loose. It was free. I wasn't

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thinking about anything when I wrote that except like,

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oh, let me be weird if I want to and not judge

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myself. And I'm jumping up

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and down, playing that flute like an idiot.

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And so I'm building the stuff at home

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in my studio and I got

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the Mellotron. I got my vocals. I got the piano. I

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have my little fingers on a little snare

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drum.

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What you're hearing right there.

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That is the very, very first

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little demo. I'm

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going to play flute.

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When I sent it to John, he

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came back and he goes, I love this, but how

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do we make this even more New York?

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In our conversations.

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John would always talk about

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the dichotomy of rich and poor

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in New York City, that

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as you're walking down a block in

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New York City, you see

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incredible amounts of wealth, and then you also

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see

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abject poverty. Even

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in the Arconia where everybody lives in

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the show, you have people

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that have been living there forever who are paying

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hundreds of dollars a month

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in rent versus people

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that are incredibly wealthy, that have these

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gorgeous apartments that are worth millions

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and millions of dollars. And

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so how do you make this more New York? I

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went back with my team and we were talking and

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Alan

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at the time was my assistant. We

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were sitting and chatting and he said, well, what if we

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made it sound like a homeless guy

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in the subway

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playing along?

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Wouldn't they be using like Home

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Depot paint buckets or something? And

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I was like, oh, that's a great idea. And

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immediately when he said that, I reached

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out to James McAllister who

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was one of my favorite drummers. He

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plays with the National, he plays

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with Sufjan Stevens and

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played on like the last, at least the last

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Taylor Swift record.

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And I told James

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the concept, I think he was in a cabin

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somewhere. He's like, but I got some microphones.

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There's some paint buckets in like the garage

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over here somewhere. And he said, yes, find

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what you've got. He went out into

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the woods, collected a bunch of twigs and

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tied them together to make drumsticks out of them.

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He took some pots and pans and

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he assembled a little drum kit and it was awesome.

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These are James's paint buckets and

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pots and pans. I

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sent it back to James.

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John and the gang and they

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were like, that's New York to me.

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I started just sort of flirting around with what

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live orchestra might sound like and

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so there's pizzicato cello in

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the melotron also.

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And I was like, oh, I'm just going to write parts

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that'll eventually get played by our orchestra.

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And then somehow in the final mix

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we felt like actually some of that shitty sounding

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cello feels cool. Leave it. Because

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sometimes it's that combination of the live cello

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with that sort of fake cello together

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that feels cool.

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It's the best feeling is that everyone signs off

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studio network producers. We

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love it. Great. Yeah,

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I thought

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it was done. But when they did the animation sequence,

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they actually had done it to a different piece of music.

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It was some oldie song with like vocals. I

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would have hoped that they would have cut the animation

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to the

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theme because the timing is everything.

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And so the sequence that they sent

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me was twice as long as the demo.

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And they're like, don't worry, it's just loop

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it. And in my mind, I was like, oh

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no, this is like not going to work.

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You can't just double up on the theme. It's

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going to get so repetitive and it needs

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more movement. It needs more movement. And

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so now I'm going to add

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one more round of the melody and

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we are going to reorchestrate the back half.

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So it feels like we intended to do that. So

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at the end of the main theme, you hear these screeches.

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And in my mind, it's a.

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cat discovering like

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danger. And with my voice, I actually

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sang,

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the, ha.

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And then I pitched it up like two or three octaves.

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And it sounds so ridiculous. And

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then we had the violins try to recreate

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that.

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And it's just a random thing of me pretending

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I was a cat, discovering a dead body.

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Up until the mix, I was making changes

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to this. And they probably didn't even realize

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all this stuff I had done. They're like, oh cool, cool, cool.

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Yeah.

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But things just happened to work out on

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this show. So in our pilot

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episode, Julie Monroe, who was editing

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it, she goes, Sid, every time

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there's a clue, every time somebody discovers

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something,

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I want to hear the,

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da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da,

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da. I want to hear that there.

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And somehow the phrasing

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always seems to

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work when

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we drop it in. And

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so the presence of that

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melody, if you closed your eyes and

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you watched the show, the score

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can also tell you a little bit about what's happening.

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It's a beautiful collaboration, that show. It's

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unlike anything I've experienced before.

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Coming up, you'll hear how all of these ideas

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and elements came together in the final piece. And

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now here's the main title theme for Only

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Murders in the Building by Siddhartha Khosla in

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its entirety.

14:29

is at songexploder.net to learn more.

14:32

You'll find links to buy or stream The Only

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Murders theme song, and you can watch the opening

14:36

title sequence from season one.

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If you liked this episode, there are a lot of other

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TV theme song episodes that

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you could check out next. One of the very

14:46

first episodes that I made of Song Exploder

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is from 2014 about the

14:51

Bob's Burgers theme song. That

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was back before the skip intro button existed.

14:57

You'll find that and all the other episodes of the podcast

14:59

at songexploder.net or

15:01

wherever you listen. Song Exploder

15:04

is produced by me, Craig Ely, Kathleen

15:06

Smith, and Mary Dolan. The episode

15:09

artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and

15:11

I made the shows theme music and logo. Song

15:14

Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia

15:16

from PRX, a network of independent,

15:19

listener supported, artist owned podcasts.

15:21

You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm.

15:26

You can follow me on Instagram at RishiHirwe,

15:28

and you can follow the show at Song Exploder.

15:31

You can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at

15:34

songexploder.net slash shirt.

15:37

I'm Rishi K. Shirwe. Thanks

15:39

for listening.

15:41

RadioTopia from PRX.

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I want to tell you about a brand new

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show coming to Radiotopia. It's called Wait

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