From Outlander to The Walking Dead to Battlestar Galactica, Bear McCreary’s music stands as some of the best ever written for television. Let’s look at why.
In this golden age of television, it seems that every few months sees the release of some new blockbuster show that could be the next Game of Thrones big thing. There are a lot of elements that go into making these huge, immersive television experiences: Writing, set and costume design, acting, meticulous research and planning and hard work…
But one of the most crucial parts of any show is the music. What would Game of Thrones be without its title sequence, so inspiring that it’s been performed by orchestras and sung by rowdy bar crowds the world over? How would we know the Draughtlander has ended, if not for the return of a newly reinvented “Skye Boat Song”?
Good music does more than just play under the events of a show; it enhances them. And among the wealth of amazing composers working in Hollywood today, there’s one whose music stands as some of the best ever written for the small screen.
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 19: Bear McCreary attends the Premiere of Orion Pictures and United Artists Releasing’s “Child’s Play” at ArcLight Hollywood on June 19, 2019 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
Bear McCreary has been a mainstay of not only TV, but movies and even video games since he broke onto the scene with his first TV show score almost 16 years ago. Today I’m going to go through five of the shows that McCreary has worked on in an effort to convince you that he is the reigning champ of television music. It’s not just that his melodies are memorable and moving (they are), or that he has an amazing knack for using culturally unique instruments to immerse us in the worlds of whatever show he’s writing for (he does). McCreary has an almost spotless track record of elevating the plot, characters, and atmosphere of every show he’s worked on throughout his career. Wired has hailed him as one of TV’s “secret weapons,” and it’s spot on.
So turn up your speakers, and come along for the ride. It’s time to get loud.
Battlestar Galactica
It’s hard to believe, but SyFy’s much lauded remake of Battlestar Galactica first premiered almost 16 years ago. At the time, music on television looked significantly different than it did today, where it’s often on par with film scores in just about every way.
Battlestar was Bear McCreary’s first job writing music for television. He was initially brought on the production as a supporting composer to Richard Gibbs, who did most of the music for the pilot. But after the first episode of Battlestar had wrapped, McCreary stepped up to become the series’ regular composer. The rest is history.
Battlestar Galactica was a story of the last survivors of humanity hurtling through space in search of a new home, all while being hunted at every turn by the robotic enemies they had created, the Cyclons. The breadth and depth of Battlestar‘s score is something that really can’t be overstated. From sweeping classical pieces like “Passacaglia” to a reimagining of Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” to the show’s main theme — which features an ancient Hindi chant that Edward James Olmos used to play on set to get in the zone — the music had a scope unlike any other sci-fi TV score. McCreary’s inventive yet grounded music helped us look past the futuristic trappings and dial in to the human struggles of these survivors dealing with the overwhelming weight of being the last of their kind.
In a genre that is often dominated by moody electronic music, McCreary’s score for Battlestar Galactica did something truly outside the norm. Coupled with the inventive camera work and direction of Ronald D. Moore, it helped make Battlestar one of the best sci-fi shows of all time.
The Walking Dead
Starting with its premiere in 2010, AMC’s monster hit show The Walking Dead basically paved the way for a resurgence of zombies in media. While the music is not one of the things you typically hear people rave about, it gives us another insight into why Bear McCreary is such an effective composer.
The Walking Dead‘s score is creepy, alternating between the droning of discordant string instruments and bleak, uncomfortable silences. There are some episodes that have hardly any music at all. And that’s part of the beauty of the show, because all those quiet moments add to the tension in a way that no song could.
It takes a great musician to know what to play and when to play it…but it takes an even better one to know when not to play. In The Walking Dead, Bear McCreary’s minimalist approach to the score calls attention to specific details, like the ominous feeling in your gut as the camera lingers on that barn door long after the last zombie has fallen, hinting at what else might lie hidden within.
And of course, when the music does kick in, it hits twice as hard.
Black Sails
When it comes to out-of-the-box scores, it’s hard to find a better show than Black Sails. The Starz drama was bloody, gritty, and filled with layer upon layer of nuance…and Bear McCreary’s bombastic music was the perfect mirror to all the action happening on screen.
One of the coolest things about the Black Sails score is how unique and varied the instruments are, which is something of a calling card for McCreary (especially with Starz; we’ll get to more of their collaborations shortly). The most iconic sound from Black Sails is the hurdy gurdy, a stringed instrument that’s kind of like a cross between a violin and an accordion. Hurdy gurdys actually existed in the 18th century when the show is set, so using that sort of sound added a whole heaping spoonful of authenticity to Nassau and its residents.
Of course, McCreary’s stellar hurdy gurdy playing didn’t pull all the weight. Black Sails has a “pirate rock” soundtrack, meaning that there are plenty of songs that combine those authentic 1700s sounds with modern electric guitar, booming percussion, and some drunken-sounding gang vocals. The tale of Long John Silver and his companions is accompanied by a truly enormous range of sounds.
Black Sails stands as an excellent example of how McCreary’s choices to use authentic, off-the-beaten path instruments deepened the world of the show. The music on Black Sails may as well be its own character, for how much it adds.
Da Vinci’s Demons
Da Vinci’s Demons is a tricky show to describe. It tells the story of a young Leonardo DaVinci as he seeks out truths and generally upsets the establishment in Rome with his outlandish theories. The shows plays fairly fast and loose with historical accuracy and doesn’t get hung up about including anachronisms here or there. Think more A Knight’s Tale than The Last Kingdom, and you’ll have a decent idea of what I’m talking about.
One place where Da Vinci’s Demons was rock solid, however, was its excellent music. The opening won an Emmy for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music in 2013, an accolade that seems more deserved the closer you look at the piece.
Staying true to the idea of the character of Leonardo da Vinci, who was known to possess the skill to write backwards, Bear McCreary composed the title theme as a musical palindrome, meaning it plays the same forwards and backwards. Below, McCreary breaks it down and then reverses the footage to prove how mindblowing the whole thing is.
In scoring Da Vinci’s Demons, McCreary honed in on specific characters and explored them musically with an amount of depth that is so impressive it borders on incomprehensible. There’s a beautiful harp and violin piece to accompany da Vinci’s love interest, Lucrezia Donati; an ominous string arrangement to announce the villainy of the Pope; and an uplifting song with bits of Middle Eastern flair to represent the horizon-broadening Sons of Mithras cult.
Whether you like the show or not, there’s no denying that its music was groundbreaking.
Outlander
Possibly the biggest show in Bear McCreary’s arsenal is Starz’s current flagship series, Outlander. In many ways, this show feels like the culmination of all the different aspects of Bear McCreary’s career pulled into one outing. He uses familiar instruments, explores familiar themes…but his work on Outlander ups the game in just about every way.
Outlander follows World War II nurse Claire Randall as she is pulled back in time to 18th century Scotland, where she falls in love with highlander Jamie Fraser. Jamie and Claire’s love story is the stuff of legend, and the music is moving and passionate to match.
Where Outlander really ups the musical ante is how, throughout the show, Jaime and Claire travel all over the world and the music changes to reflect their journey. Up until its most recent season, each season of Outlander featured different settings (Scotland, France, the Caribbean, and pre-Revolution America). McCreary’s score has incorporated different instruments to reflect each of those cultures. And like Black Sails, there’s a ton of authenticity to the instrument choices he makes, like including twangy banjos for the Americas, bagpipes for Scotland, and hand drums for the Caribbean.
That the score changes to reflect the geography is impressive enough. But McCreary also shows an incredible understanding of the characters’ journeys by how the music evolves over the course of the series, which spans decades for characters like Jamie and Claire.
Season 5 was all about the Frasers laying down roots in their North Carolina homestead. Since there were no new geographical changes, McCreary dug into musical cues he’d already introduced, making them ever more sophisticated. He was laying down roots, just like the Frasers.
With any luck, those roots will be deep and strong, and we’ll have many more years of Bear McCreary’s amazing scores ahead of us.
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