A new season of True Detective premiered recently. For this season, the theme changed once again to something a little more familiar. Previous themes included The Handsome Family’s “Far From Any Road” for season one. Leonard Cohen’s “Nevermind” was the soundtrack to season two. Son Houses’ “Death Letter Blues” themed season three. For the latest season—True Detective: Night —the series tapped Billie Eilish for its theme.
Night Country used Eilish’s track “bury a friend” from her 2019 album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? The song is decidedly spooky and haunting, with lines that feature Billie Eilish asking “What do you want from me? / What don’t you run from me? / What are you wondering? / What do you know?” and “Step on the glass, staple your tongue / Bury a friend, try to wake up / Cannibal class, killing the son / Bury a friend, I wanna end me.”
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How Billie Eilish’s “bury a friend” Sets the Tone for True Detective Season Four
The theme sets the tone for Night Country. True Detective as an anthology has an overall knack for getting under the audience’s skin with its music and imagery. Billie Eilish’s song possesses a plethora of creep factors, which is perfect for the show.
Season four showrunner Issa López recently spoke with Business Insider about using the song for the show. “I knew that the series was going to need a powerful anthem, a showstopper, honestly,” she said. “When we were doing the titles, I tried several things and then I realized that the lyrics of this song seem to be written for the series. It’s crazy. It talks about a tongue, about burying your friend. It seemed that it was made for the show. So we tried it and it just matched and it was meant to be.”
This season stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as the titular detectives investigating the disappearance of eight researchers in Alaska. To up the ante, they’re conducting their investigation during the last sunset of the year. This happens in Alaskan areas close to the North Pole and lasts for up to two months. The idea of night lasting for two months is enough to make anyone a little squirrelly. Here, the two detectives have to deal with the supernatural on top of their own personal traumas.
“Things happen when the dark goes for too long,” López said. “Things crawl out of the corners that shy from the light, and if you keep it dark long enough, secrets are going to come to the surface.”
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