If I could write down the sound of the Bridgerton theme song, I would. “Duh da dah da duh duh dadaaaah” doesn’t quite do it. But you can hear it, can’t you? That sweeping, hopeful violin over strokes of thumping cello. That music — like all good theme songs — immediately brings you into another world. And in this case, it’s the world of the hit Shondaland series for Netflix, where young women stand up for themselves and learn self-love, where young men learn how to be more vulnerable and compassionate, and where fierce horseback riding at dawn can cure most ailments.
The music of Bridgerton is not the least among the parts that help to create the world envisioned by Chris Van Dusen’s writing and executive producers Shonda Rhimes’ and Betsy Beers’ guidance. Indeed, they’re the ones who handpicked those who crafted the music that helps tell the Bridgerton story.
Composer Kris Bowers, known for his work on the Netflix series Dear White People and the Oscar-winning film Green Book, had previously worked with the Shondaland family on ABC’s For the People. Justin Kamps took over from his mentor, Alexandra Patsavas, as music supervisor for season two of Bridgerton and is responsible for all those classical covers of pop songs that Bridgerton is so well known for. We can also thank Beers for that, as it was her brainchild during production of season one to re-create modern pop hits like Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” and Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You.”
With season two safely out in the world and breaking hearts everywhere, we thought it was high time to sit down with the magicians behind the music, Bowers and Kamps, to find out how they do what they do and have them fill us in on the secrets behind the sound of Bridgerton.
Kris Bowers on the Bridgerton theme song
The fun thing about it is that it wasn’t initially written as the theme song. It was written as a piece to play during the ball where Daphne and Simon first dance together under the fireworks at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. It took a second to find that theme, something that worked for that moment, because Chris [Van Dusen] wanted something that felt modern. Up until that point, all the balls’ source music — essentially, the music that everybody was dancing to — felt a bit more traditional than the score had been feeling. So, for that moment, he really wanted to lean into almost a pop sound. We wrote it to the BPM [beats per minute] of Daphne’s and Simon’s dancing and created something that functioned similarly to a pop song, as far as the core progression, melody, and the rhythm and groove went. When it came time to write the main title, I tried a few different ideas, reworking other parts of other themes, including the Lady Whistledown theme, Daphne’s theme, and Daphne and Simon’s theme. And at some point, Chris asked the music editor to try cutting that little piece of music from the ball into the main title and just fell in love with the way it worked.
Justin Kamps on all the covers at the balls
As you know, the Bridgerton balls are the main events of all the characters’ lives. They’re the big flourishes when we get to see everyone in the ton coming together, and we feature pop covers to heighten it even more.
In season two, we start with the Pastel Ball, where the Sharmas are coming out for the first time to see everyone and be seen. Everyone else’s main reason to be there is to begin looking for potential pairings. What we’re hearing is a beautiful rendition of Madonna’s “Material Girl” by our composer, Kris Bowers. This season, he wrote and recorded a couple of the ball songs, and this was one of them. And it’s the perfect song for this ball because you can see that these young women and men are looking for a match who comes from a good house or has lots of money — material things. Chris really wanted it for that scene, and getting to have Kris compose [the arrangement] allowed us to tailor it exactly for that moment of the Sharmas’ arrival.
In that same episode, we have the Queen’s lavish Diamond Ball. This is where we hear the Hannah V and Joe Rodwell cover of Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” Up to this point, this is the event of the season and where Edwina is crowned the Diamond of the season. And it had to be that song; it’s perfect. Like, if the Queen was putting together a playlist, she would want it to be right on the nose. She wants everyone to know that this is the Diamond Ball, so they’re going to play “Diamonds” as people arrive.
The next ball is in episode four when Anthony and Kate dance together for the first time, to “Dancing on My Own” by Robyn in a cover by Vitamin String Quartet, who we love and used a bunch in season one as well. This song has just a great energy to it. And at this point in the story, we’re in a situation where Anthony is more publicly courting Edwina, but clearly Kate and Anthony have a connection. The lyrics focus on having feelings for someone, but you’re not the one that they’re kissing, and you’re not the one that they’re taking home. I think that reflects both their feelings in that moment as they’re having this dance and shooting these tension-filled looks at each other. There are so many emotions as their eyes dart toward each other. And certain people in the crowd are picking up on the electricity between them.
There’s not another big ball moment all the way until the final episode, as far as the covers go. Here, the Featheringtons are throwing their lavish ball, and by this time, so much has happened between Kate and Anthony. Here, they finally get a chance to dance together again, and it’s to the cover of Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” by Midnite String Quartet. Finally, we have a moment where they get to be together after everything that’s happened, and it’s a bit freeing because everyone in the ton has heard what happened, and they’re still gossiping, but it’s a great moment because they finally get to dance with each other in a way that would fuel that gossip, but the Queen shuts them down immediately.
Kamps on all the other pop-song covers
The first cover people will hear this season is Nirvana’s “Stay Away” by Vitamin String Quartet. It plays in this montage of Anthony going through his day, interviewing potential matches, going on all these dates, and having to deal with all the family duties, managing their money and everything. It’s this frenetic sound, mimicking the stresses that are put on him. A lot of the string covers we use are flowing and lavish, and this one’s a little bit different with its aggressive energy. But it matches the standoffish way that Anthony’s going about his life, and these wife interviews, as he calls them. I think it’s a great new addition and helps expand the sound of the Bridgerton covers.
In episode five, we have the cover of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” from Duomo, who you might recognize from season one when they did the cover of Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams.” We were so happy to have them back again, and this is one of my favorite covers of this season because of the way it transforms Alanis’ original recording into something with a totally different sound and emotional level. It plays at a point where on another show you might have an explosive end to the episode, but instead we have this lovely track that now has this anticipatory feel bringing you along as Kate and Anthony discuss what they’re going to do — Kate is begging Anthony to continue with the plan and marry her sister. [Adding to] the emotions that we’re left with after he agrees to do that, this song has a propulsive feeling that brings the viewer along and helps to push play on that next episode right away.
Another song we were all so excited to include is Kris’ cover of “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham” from the famous Bollywood film of the same name. It’s the first time we’ve included a Bollywood track, and it’s so appropriate because it’s playing during the sequence in episode six that features the Haldi ceremony prior to Edwina and Anthony’s wedding and is intercut with Anthony’s bachelor party [or “stag do,” as they call it in the United Kingdom]. There’s been so much excitement about hearing this cover from fans online. We had a unique opportunity to include it, and I’m so glad we did because it will be meaningful to a lot of people feeling like they’re being represented.
In that same episode, there’s the cover of Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” by Steve Horner. This is the big Edwina and Anthony wedding-entrance sequence. Everyone’s walking down the aisle; the audience is waiting in anticipation to see what happens because we’re all rooting for Kate now. Listening to the original song, you might not think that it would work for a bride walking down an aisle, but the cover is just so big, and the strings are flying all over the place; it’s sweeping and soaring and majestic. It really does lend itself to this big moment in someone’s life. And this is the biggest wedding because it’s put on by the Queen. Well, the biggest almost-wedding.
Pink’s “What About Us” by Duomo plays when the fallout from the almost-wedding happens. This is another cover that people will be hearing for the first time on the show. It plays in this moment after Edwina has made up her mind about not wanting to go through with the wedding. It felt appropriate because everyone in that situation is kind of left thinking, “Okay, well, now what about us? What are we going to do?” Edwina’s left the marriage, so what’s going to happen with Anthony, with Kate, with the Sharmas, with the Bridgerton family? Are they going to be able to weather the scandal? That’s everyone’s question on their mind at that moment.
In episode seven, the moment the whole show has been building up to happens — when the desire between Kate and Anthony finally boils over, and they can no longer hold it at bay, and they make love. Here we have Calvin Harrison and Disciples’ “How Deep Is Your Love” covered by Kiris Houston. Kanthony finally acts on their feelings, and it’s touching and romantic, and this song is asking the question — how deep is your love? — and they’re answering it on-screen with beautiful sensuality.
Bowers on composing the Bollywood cover
Getting to cover this song was awesome in a lot of ways, but specifically because I have a composing assistant, Sahil Jindal, who, when we were spotting that episode, which had a temporary version of the song in it, told me that “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham” is one of his mom’s favorite songs. He told me how, growing up, he heard this song all the time. And this proved incredibly valuable because one of the biggest notes from Chris in that section was that when we go back and forth between the Haldi ceremony with the Sharmas and the Bridgerton boys on their stag do, he wanted a different sound for each. Sahil was the one who pointed out that there is a section of the song that they hadn’t used in the temp version that could work for that. Because he knew the song so well from growing up with it, he helped to make sure that we were honoring it in as traditional a way as possible. I was so thankful that I had somebody on my team who could speak to that.
Bowers on scoring the show for seasons one and two
There were two specific moments for me that were pivotal in creating the sound of the show. One was the first time I heard those modern covers. I remember watching through the first episode of season one and hearing the “Thank U, Next” cover. It was a light-bulb moment for me, thinking about how I could lean into that modern aspect throughout the score both rhythmically and with chord progressions. I would listen to pop music and figure out how that instrumentation of guitar, bass, or drums was locking up to create a groove. I thought about how I could mirror that with an orchestra. But even before that, when we were trying to find the sound of the show, the second moment for me came when Chris, Shonda, and Betsy kept saying how they wanted the show to feel modern and different, not like your grandmother’s Regency television show — they wanted it to feel fresh and to have an edge.
Admittedly, I had a trial-and-error period. The first swing I took, I thought maybe if I wrote really traditional music of that time period but recorded it in a really modern way, like making it sound really of the now, essentially, that maybe that would be a way to go. We tried that, and it still felt too traditional. Then I tried writing music in the style of Beethoven and then chopping that up into samples and making beats out of it. But that felt too much like a departure.
The other piece of information from Chris that really helped me was when he sent me these Maurice Ravel piano pieces. That opened up a totally different sound in my mind because I was focusing on either 1813 or 2020, but Ravel’s music is from the early 20th century, and it made me think of how we could really use any kind of sound that we wanted. Ravel’s sound also made so much sense to me because it’s so romantic, so dreamy, and has this impressionistic quality to it. So then I started to write more modern progressions and harmonies that are a bit denser than something that’s of the Regency era. Actually, the Ravel piano pieces inspired me to write Daphne and Simon’s theme, which was the first piece that I wrote for the whole show because we had to have it for Phoebe Dynevor to be able to play on the piano in the show.
At that point, I thought about how I could take some of these different aspects of orchestration and find a way to modernize it rhythmically. With season two, it was about continuing that sound and those same ideas, but I definitely leaned much more into the pop aspect of it all. This season, the score has even more of a pop sensibility to it, and I used pop as an inspiration more, just knowing how big that part of the sound became.
Of course, we had some different and new themes this year. It’s so fun to be able to evolve some themes and create entirely new ones for each new season of a show. Like the Lady Whistledown/Penelope [Nicola Coughlan] theme has a different sound to it for season two that’s specific to the character’s evolution. Eloise and Theo have their own theme. And of course, Kate and Anthony have their own theme this year to replace Simon and Daphne’s. The new themes were maybe the biggest shift in the sound for this year.
Kamps on picking the pop songs for the balls
It’s a very collaborative process, and the conversations start very early on. Chris will talk with the choreographer, Jack Murphy, as they’re thinking about the balls, and then I will have a conversation with the choreographer to talk about what we need to look for in a song. Because at any given ball, they will have multiple dances, so for each dance we need to have a song ready to go. And it’s not like they’re going to do the same dance every time, so there will be different tempos, different time signatures, or different vibes altogether. We need to try and find the right song for those moments so that we can get them in the ears of our actors and our choreographer to start rehearsing. Then, once we have the episode shot, and the footage starts coming into our editors in post-production, then it becomes another conversation about those same ball sequences and how they’re getting edited together to tell a story and not just solely feature the dance.
Maybe that song that we had used for the choreography no longer fits because it’s been cut together in a different order; various things can change.
So then we have another conversation about what we’re now looking for here. Like with “Material Girl,” for example, that was one where I reached out to Chris early on to ask if there were any songs that he really wanted to hear this season, and that was one of them. It’s one of the reasons why we ended up having Kris cover it, because we really wanted to make a great moment out of that, and it needed to work for us. The whole time, I’m providing options for Chris and all the producers to listen to, and the discussions happen throughout the editing and mixing of the episode as we try to decide what would be best for the scenes based on the story and the feeling they want to go for. I’m always trying to facilitate Chris’ vision.
Valentina Valentini is a London-based entertainment, travel, and food writer and also a Senior Contributor for Shondaland. Elsewhere she has written for Vanity Fair, Vulture, Variety, Thrillist, Heated, and The Washington Post. Her personal essays can be read in the Los Angeles Times, Longreads, and her tangents and general complaints can be seen on Twitter at @ByValentinaV.
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