Here’s What Went Into Making ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ Superb Theme Song

It used to be a given that every show would have a theme song. However, times have changed and so has our affinity for opening credits… Unless you’re talking about Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. In the case of this show, its opening credits are part of what makes it such an interesting and delightfully innovative watch in 2018.

After the opening song’s first verse warning that “Every single episode is nothing but dismay”, every other episode launches into a slightly different second verse. The changing lyrics stay the same for each book. For example, the verses for Season 2’s “The Vile Village: Part 1” and “The Vile Village: Part 2” are the same, but the second verses for “The Vile Village: Part 1” and “The Hostile Hospital: Part 1” are different.

“It’s partially intended so that you can drop in at any episode and still have a really great experience and still have the backstory,” Nick Urata, the composer behind A Series of Unfortunate Events and the show’s innovative credits, said in an interview with Decider.

Urata revealed Sonnenfeld and Daniel Handler, the author behind the series and the real identity of the fictional author Lemony Snicket (played on the show by Patrick Warbuton), were the ones to come up with the show’s changing lyrics.

The whole process of putting together the tracks started about a year and a half ago. Naturally for a show obsessed with language, everything started with the words, and things moved quickly after that.

“Daniel Handler came up with these amazing lyrics, which are pretty unique, telling the audience to look away from the show you’re about to watch,” Urata said. “We started talking about [the changing opening credits], over the weekend, and by like Sunday night I had [the lyrics for] the first 10 episodes.”

Handler’s involvement in the lyrics adds a distinctive touch to each episode. The changing second verses are filled with odd near rhymes that fit with the often dim-witted and messy Count Olaf’s language patterns. At one point, Neil Patrick Harris (who plays Olaf on the show) even rhymes the word “fierce” and “worse.”

According to Urata, fitting in those complicated rhymes was a challenge both in the recording booth and from a melodic point of view. However, the hardest part about constructing this show’s opening credits was knowing when to trim the song down.

“The earlier version was actually longer and had more lyrics, but we had to truncate it to fit 50 seconds or however long it is,” Urata said. The opening credits are roughly a minute and five seconds long, but Neil Patrick Harris doesn’t begin singing until five seconds after the music starts. Though there are no strict time limits on Netflix shows, it was important to the Unfortunate Events team that they made each opening sequence concise, so that they could have a similar amount of graphics each episode.

After the lyrics were created by Handler and the music was created by Urata, Editor Stuart Bass spliced together footage from each episode into a sort of clip reel. Similar footage is used for parts one and two of each adapted book.

“We put it together over the course of a couple of weeks,” Urata said. “I sang the original version, and then we had Neil Patrick Harris come in and sing the final version as his character, Olaf.”

Though the images, music and lyrics might technically be the same for each duology, there’s an Easter egg hiding inside. For Part 1 of every adopted story, Harris sings the opening song as himself. However, for Part 2, he sings the theme song in the voice of whatever disguise Olaf is using for that story. If you listen closely, you can hear fake Olaf personas like Captain Julio Sham, Captain Genghis, and Detective Dupin belting out the lyrics.

“[Neil Patrick Harris] is so fluid at switching in between his characters that I think it was sort of a no-brainer for him,” Urata said. “And I think also he enjoyed being able to sing in all of those different ranges and voices.”

Though Urata admitted having an opening song with changing lyrics and melodies could be challenging at times, it actually made the final outcome better. “It was nice to have a little vignette for each book written by the author and sang by Olaf. So that’s a double whammy of goodness,” he said.

The resulting opening number is exactly what a show’s opening title needs to be in the age of streaming — informative, catchy, and short; all while perfectly establishing the tone of the series it’s introducing. And there’s a good chance that the music of A Series of Unfortunate Events is going to get even better for the show’s third and final season.

“The last couple of characters are pretty amazing, and I’m hoping that we’ll get a rousing performance out of Olaf,” Urata said. “I believe that there’s a final bookend song that we’ll do as well. We haven’t quite gotten there yet.”

There are a lot of things unfortunate about Lemony Snicket’s dark story, but those opening credits aren’t one of them.

Stream A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix