In Daredevil: Born Again's thrilling premiere, Foggy Nelson is gunned down by Bullseye. With that, Matt Murdock gives up his superhero alter-ego; however, Daredevil calls out to him and that's teased through the show's fantastic score by The Newton Brothers.
The Daredevil theme is used sparingly throughout the first six episodes before Matt finally declares, "F*ck it" and dons the suit to rescue Angela del Toro from Muse. As he rushes the villain, the Man Without Fear's theme kicks in because Daredevil is finally back!
We recently got to speak with Andy and Taylor about their work on Daredevil: Born Again and asked how they teed up this huge moment for the character.
"We owe a lot to the writers and the way that they set that up," Taylor started. "We were able to approach the music in a way where we hint at things, and then you feel like the payoff happens. It’s fun. To me, it makes it feel very grounded and real when you have Matt, and he’s sort of struggling with the loss of one of his best friends. Should he be Daredevil? Should he not? I feel like he’s getting pulled back into something for better or for worse, and it feels very grounded, not like, ‘I’m a superhero,’ [Laughs] but it’s about life."
"It feels very, very much like him struggling with who he wants to be. That tension, we really wanted to play with in the music," the composer continued. "At times, even when he’s in the courtroom, it’s like he’s at church internally with himself and his thoughts, and you feel like he’s almost haunted by his past. It was really fun to play with that juxtaposition of where he is and make the theme pay off."
Andy then chimed in to explain how they set the stage for one of Daredevil: Born Again's biggest musical moments.
"Something that was cool was that Taylor came up with this idea to have the solo cello panning left and right to give you a sense of space. We even recorded the orchestra that way so we could have some natural panning. What’s fun about it is you’ll hear, and that’s part of Matt’s theme, but going into Daredevil’s theme, you’ll hear hints. As a viewer, the idea is you’re hearing that and going, ‘Oh, are we going to go there?’ and it gives you little teases of ‘Here we go.’ That’s a fun thing we were able to play with with that motif throughout the season. You give little sprinklings of that, where you may or may not be leading up to Daredevil. Will he be the addict that says no to that drink or take that drink?"
Taylor added, "It’s funny because we discussed with one of the executives about how he’s on the phone and just says, ‘F*ck it.’ As he goes, you actually don’t hear the Daredevil theme yet. You just hear the building of it, and it’s pulling you in. he talked about that with us and how we could push it as far as we could without playing the theme because right after the subway comes, it’s the big payoff. It was very much a conversation."
Interestingly, Andy talked about how the sixth episode's fight with Muse ties into the brutal ending to episode two where Matt loses his cool and beats down a couple of corrupt cops. It turns out they made a deliberate effort to leave that sequence score-free to ensure the theme's use in this later scene with Muse hit that little bit harder.
"You have that moment at the end of two where he gets in the fight in the apartment with the police officers, and you want it to go there. This came on the Marvel side and the director's side, ‘Let’s go to no music to that fight in episode 2’ and it really pays off nicely with his rage scream at the end," he explained. "But it plays really nicely into then what happens in 6 and Taylor and I are always thinking, if it’s in a film, wether you want to feel emotion or scared, about things you plant or don’t plant and how you getn to where you want to be because it's a journey on the music side. Within this, it was really fun to have that payoff in 6 and hold out in 2 where it’s like, 'Nope, not yet.'"
During our conversation with the composers, we also heard from them on how comic books helped them create Daredevil: Born Again's unique sound; their approach to characters like The Punisher, Muse, and Kingpin; the creative overhaul; the importance of keeping the hero's theme; and whether they've started work on season 2.
We'll have more highlights to share with you soon, but if you'd rather not wait, you can watch the interview in its entirety above.
The first volume of the Daredevil: Born Again soundtrack is now available and can be found on The Newton Brothers' YouTube channel and wherever you stream music.