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Westworld ends its first season on “Exit Music (For a Film)”
In the first-season finale of HBO's Westworld, “The Bicameral Mind”, shown on Sunday 4 December, the android Dolores picks the music herself, and she picks “Exit Music (For a Film)”. It is Ramin Djawadi's arrangement for orchestra, merged with the series' main title theme, and it fades just before Dr Ford's Debussy “Reverie” plays again and Dolores shoots him.
Djawadi told Vulture that the song was first written for Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, and that he sees a tragic love story in Dolores and the Man in Black. All season Ford has used modern songs to nudge the androids towards consciousness, as Vulture reads the show, and in the finale they start choosing their own. They're picking their songs, rather than the songs picked for them. They're scoring their own actions.
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Djawadi had already set “No Surprises” for piano in the second episode, where it plays twice while Maeve (Thandie Newton) fails her scripted spiel and is reset.
In October he described the piano pieces as a jukebox of preset music, in which a tune the viewer knows tells them the scene is programmed and keeps repeating. The showrunner, Jonathan Nolan, is a Radiohead fan and asks for their songs. When Jonathan says, 'Do a Radiohead song,' I say, 'Great!'
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Radiohead songs in Westworld's first season
| # | Episode | Shown | Song | Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Chestnut | 9 October 2016 | No Surprises | Piano, Ramin Djawadi |
| 6 | The Adversary | 6 November 2016 | Fake Plastic Trees | Piano, Ramin Djawadi |
| 6 | The Adversary | 6 November 2016 | Motion Picture Soundtrack | Vitamin String Quartet (licensed) |
| 10 | The Bicameral Mind | 4 December 2016 | Exit Music (For a Film) | Orchestra, Ramin Djawadi, with the main title theme |
Ramin Djawadi's Exit Music (For a Film), from the Westworld season one soundtrack· WaterTower Musicwatch on youtube →