While Netflix's Daredevil was by no means perfect, it was hard to find fault with John Paesano's theme for the Man Without Fear. It played both over the show's opening credits and throughout the series itself, becoming synonymous with the character in the process.
Composers The Newton Brothers, Andy and Taylor, were previously tasked by Marvel Studios with scoring X-Men '97. That meant having to both update and respect X-Men: The Animated Series' iconic theme, something the duo did a phenomenal job with last year.
Since then, they've been enlisted to score Daredevil: Born Again, and six episodes in, we can surely all agree that their work has been flawless. Once again, they set out to respect and re-introduce a familiar theme, and that started with the show's haunting, beautiful opening credits.
In the first of several excerpts from our near 30-minute conversation with The Newton Brothers, we hear from Andy and Taylor about paying homage to what's come before, all while putting their own epic spin on it.
"Yes, we tried a lot of different options as we always do in the beginning to see what was working," Taylor tells us in the video above. "The intention was to honour and continue the original series, so we wanted to bring back the theme and expand on it."
"I think the real underlining thing was the Matt Murdock of it all. What is his theme? What’s his journey in this story?" he added. "We were able to play on that in the main titles and hint at his theme as the series continues. That was the big thing."
Andy added, "I think that being fans ourselves, it was the discussion at the get-go between Taylor and I of, 'That original John Paesano theme needs to be in there. That’s Daredevil, but what is this new journey we go on this season? Where do we need to take that musically, and what does it mean?'"
"As Taylor said, it was finding out who Matt Murdock was and that theme. That informed who each of the alter-egos of everyone else there was out there and how we approach that."
During our conversation with the composers, we also heard from them on how comic books helped them create the show's unique sound; their approach to characters like The Punisher, Muse, and Kingpin; and Daredevil: Born Again's creative overhaul.
We'll be bringing you more highlights 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.