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Q: Who did "True Detective's" theme song? I loved it and thought it was perfect for the show.

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Author: 
Adam Thomlison / TV Media

It depends which season you mean. Given that each season follows a completely different cast of characters in a completely different setting, it makes sense that each one has had a different theme.

The first season's horn-accompanied country ballad was a song called "Far From Any Road" by The Handsome Family, a husband-and-wife alt-country duo. It appears on their 2003 album "Singing Bones."

Season 2's theme was by a somewhat more famous artist -- it's "Nevermind" by legendary folk poet Leonard Cohen, from his 2014 record "Popular Problems."

The husband half of "The Handsome Family," who writes all their music (while his wife writes the lyrics) said that their song was written with deserts and scorpions in mind -- far from the lush bayou setting of the first season of "True Detective."

"But that's what's so wonderful about it" being selected as the show's theme, he said in an interview on National Public Radio. "A song should have space that it can take on many meanings and take on many lives and can be put in different contexts and fit perfectly."

The second season's theme has a little more urban cool -- Cohen, the patron saint of Montreal, can't help but exude it -- which makes it a better match to its setting, since season 2 is about city politics rather than rural crime.

Interestingly, as with many of Cohen's songs, "Nevermind" began life as a poem. It was published in his 2006 poetry collection "Book of Longing."

A third season of the HBO series has now wrapped filming, but no premiere date has been released. Nor has the theme song.

 

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