Why this haunting song from the Game of Thrones soundtrack isn’t in the show

For eight seasons, Ramin Djawadi was Game of Thrones’ secret weapon. From the iconic opening theme to “Light of the Seven” to the haunting Jon-Daenerys love theme, he turned out beautiful, memorable compositions time after time after time.

If you listened to the official season 8 soundtrack, you may have noticed something odd: there’s a song on there that never actually appeared on the show. I’m talking about “Stay a Thousand Years,” a choral version of the Jon-Dany love theme.

Hot damn, that’s actually really pretty and sad.

Anyway, what gives? Why wasn’t this song in the show? Was it for a scene that got cut or something? Speaking to Insider, Djawadi said that he wrote it just for him. “Many times when I come to the end of the season and I’m done writing [music for the show], I feel I want to write another piece,” Djawadi said in an interview with Insider. “I just can’t quite let go yet. So then I’ll just write something and stick it on the album. That’s just really just me having fun.”

"Obviously their relationship with just such a big thing, the way the show ended with her death and everything. [‘Stay a Thousand Years’] is just another personal piece of mine that I felt like it would be nice to have out there. I felt like it made their love eternal. It makes their relationship forever. Again, it was just personal. I was having fun writing and being emotional about it."

Wait, I have something in my eye. And here I thought allergy season was over.

The title for the song is taken from a scene from “Winterfell,” from right after Jon and Dany take a joyride on Dany’s dragons. It’s probably the last happy moment they have together.

Djawadi claims he didn’t write the song because of any particular attachment to Daenerys. “I try not to favor any characters or anything. It’s really just a coincidence that I [picked Dany and Jon’s music]. It was just really quite [an] emotional theme. And obviously her death was a big deal and I was shaken by that just like everybody else watching it.”

And indeed, this just seems to be something Djawadi does; he wrote another choral song, “Dark Wings, Dark Words,” especially for the season 3 soundtrack, although that one later turned up in season 4. The guy’s just spilling over with musical genius.

At the moment, Djawadi is touring with the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience, which kicked off last week in Toronto and will hit plenty more dates in North American before it wraps up this leg of the journey in October. “With my schedule and everything, I wasn’t able to do the entire tour, even though I would have loved to,” Djawadi said. “All the concerts have been so much fun and connecting with the fans is incredible.”

Unfortunately, you won’t hear “Stay a Thousand Years” on the set list. “I didn’t realize that people would pick it up like this,” Djawadi said. “And it’s not in the live show, but now this makes me think about maybe putting it in one day, because it would be really powerful to perform live with the choir. That would be actually really great [laughing]. Maybe I should have put it in.”

"We could’ve done a whole concert just with season eight material, since there was so much new music. It was hard. I had to take out or shorten some pieces just to make room for all the [new songs], because obviously we wanted to play ‘The Night King’ and ‘Jenny of Oldstones.’ ‘Jenny of Oldstones’ is really incredible live with our vocalist. It might be one of my favorites. It’s really powerful."

Yes, I will listen to “Jenny of Oldstones” every chance I get.

“Now [the concert] feels like a closure,” Djawadi said. “It’s nice for people who can relive [‘Game of Thrones’] in its entirety now. I was quite emotional about it while preparing for this because, just like many people, I wasn’t ready to let go of the show yet.”

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Preaching to the choir there, Djawadi. If you want to take in the Game of Thrones Concert Experience, check out the dates here.

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