Tim Booth, the musician behind the song from the season 7 promo, talks working with HBO

Since debuting on Friday, the first official for Game of Thrones season 7 (well, the first to use new footage of the actors, at any rate), has racked up 12 million views. Not too shabby. Oh, let’s watch it again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxWfvtnHtS0

As is HBO’s custom, they scored the promo with a pop song, rather than using one of show composer Ramin Djawadi’s songs. This time, it was “Sit Down,” an early ’90s anthem from alt-rock band James.

As you can hear, the song was heavily remixed for the promo, but probably not as much as you think. Billboard caught up with James frontman Tim Booth to talk about how their song ended up in HBO’s hands.

“Sit Down” was a big hit for James in the UK, although it was never released in the US. If Americans know James, it’s probably through “Laid,” which appeared in a couple of the American Pie movies.

Because it’s relatively light-hearted, James never had reservations about licensing “Laid.” But when it came to “Sit Down,” they were much more selective, “because we knew it was dear to a lot of people’s hearts.” But when HBO came knocking around four months ago, the choice was pretty easy. “We trusted the makers of Game of Thrones with ‘Sit Down,’ because quite frankly, they haven’t put a foot wrong,” Booth said. “It’s the best adaptation of a book that I’ve ever seen, and stands alongside it as genius.”

"Jimmy [Jim Glennie] — our bass player…Jimmy’s read all the books, I’ve read all the books, I’ve seen the show a couple of times with my wife, with my kids, and I love it."

Hopefully his kids are of age.

Anyway, James pretty much gave HBO the rights to use the song as they saw fit. “We totally assumed they would “medieval” the song,” he said.

"They did do a weird version, that was probably more in keeping with their style. We got sent that probably a month ago, sung by a female singer, and you couldn’t tell it was “Sit Down” until you heard the chorus lyric. It was so different, the chords were different, everything was different about it. It was pure Game of Thrones. We thought, “Great! Bonkers! Fantastically mad!” We were OK with that."

But as you can hear in the promo, the version they went with isn’t terribly medieval-sounding. Apparently, HBO had a change of heart at some point during the recording process, and just decided to alter the original version. “So they got that, and they effected it and slowed it down a little bit. But it’s pretty much “Sit Down” as we recorded it, and there’s no additions to it, no changes — they’ve just taken a few things out, distorted the guitar a bit, put the vocal back a bit.”

It’s kind of hard to believe that the version used in the promo is an altered version of the original song — they sound so different — but that’s recording magic. Unfortunately, because HBO made this remix especially for the promo, that means you can’t download it separately…unless HBO decides to put it on the season 7 soundtrack or something. As The Verge points out, that’s not uncommon when putting together songs for trailers and such. Too bad.

Like any fan, Booth has opinions on where the show is going. “[T]hey clearly loved the lyric ‘Those who find they’re touched by madness,'” he said. “Cersei [Lannister] certainly seems to be heading in that direction.” As for who should come out on top in the end…

"Definitely Daenerys you want to see on the throne, because she’s the only ruler who seems to be born to it, who seems to have all the qualities that you’d like to follow. If you’re going to follow a leader, Daenerys. Jon Snow is impressive, but he’s a bit stupid. What he did in the battle [against Ramsey Bolton last season] was dumb, so you wouldn’t say he looks like a great leader compared to Daenerys…But you know, the great thing about the writing is, there’ll be a price to pay if that happens. You’ll get this, but you’ll also get this. Anything can happen."

Odds are Booth will be watching with the rest of us when season 7 premieres on July 16.