“Yellowjackets” composers and songwriters Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker jumped on the probability to jot down the unique music and lyrics contender “Sit Proper Down” for Episode 7 of the Showtime sequence.“We have been deep into the blood, fragmentation, descent and sanity-shattering music,” Wedren says, referring to the occasions that the survivors should endure this season. The producers requested them to jot down an “MGM, old fashioned normal quantity meets Bob Fosse.”
The dream sequence occurs as Simone Kessell’s Lottie asks the grownup Yellowjackets to decide on a remedy possibility remedy at her “wellness retreat.” Misty, performed by Christina Ricci, finds herself in a sensory tank after selecting “Steerage.” She wants it. Within the teen timeline, Misty (performed by Samantha Hanratty) makes a brand new bestie in Crystal, a fellow theater lover. Besides, Misty’s openness together with her BFF throughout a spherical of rapid-fire secrets and techniques involves a tragic finish when Misty confesses she sabotaged the flight’s black field recorder. Mortified, Crystal asks if Misty will “poison her,” to which she replies “I’ll fucking kill you.” Moments later, Crystal has by chance fallen off the cliff to her dying. In the meantime, grownup Misty is racking up the “deaths” after kidnapping and spiking a reporter’s cigarette.
Within the fever dream sequence, the sensory tank turns into a musical haven for Misty as her beloved pet chicken Caligula has taken human type, performed by Broadway star John Cameron Mitchell.
Misty’s face is superimposed within the background, watching as Elijah Wooden’s Walter dances round in a high hat with sketches of a needle, axe and the black field floating within the foreground to the tune.
As ’90s veterans — Wedren of the band Shudder to Assume and Waronker of That Canine — Waronker calls the venture a “dream task” as a result of it tapped into their musical songwriting and comedic abilities that they’d been doing for years. “It was very fast,” Waronker says of the songwriting course of.
Wedren admits the music theme and the descending line for “Sit Proper Down” got here to him straight away. “I picked up the guitar and began plucking it out.” By the point Waronker came visiting to work on the music, the 2 started to tweak the melody and swap lyrics backwards and forwards. He says, “By the tip of the day, I believed, ‘Now that’s a present tune.’”
Waronker says their method for the music, which had lyrics that inform Misty to “bathe within the sound and sit proper down,” “was to take a music with these basic model melodies and use the lyrics in a ‘Yellowjackets’ method, in order that it was multi-layered with plenty of which means and there must be a humorousness however not over-the-top humorous and never a gag.”
He continues, “We knew that it was a remedy session the place Caligula is giving Misty a pep speak about being murderous and simply to not maintain again and to kill each motherfucker that will get in your method. So, we had a ball writing that as a result of it’s punk…it’s type of ‘Sweeney Todd.’”
Wedren, who was talking through Zoom from New York and had simply seen the “Sweeney Todd” Broadway revival, says “The entire time I used to be pondering, ‘That is what I like about ‘Yellowjackets.’ There’s blood, horror, humor, unusual music, conventional music and it’s very irreverent. However there’s one thing grounded and rooted in it, and ‘Sit Proper Down’ had a little bit little bit of that in it.”
When the collaborators have been penning the music and laying down music, Mitchell was not on board at first — however he turned the proper addition.
Wedren says, “We have been relieved as a result of it was clear we must add nothing, and he would simply add, add and add. His addition was just like the whipped cream, caramel and maraschino cherry on high of the sundae.”
Mitchell, who penned the Tony Award-winning musical “Hedwig and the Indignant Inch,” didn’t want a lot steering. Says Wedren, “We have to e-book a studio and see if John can come out.” As an alternative, they despatched the multi-hyphenate an instrumental which he recorded at his residence. “Once we obtained it again, it was like Liza Minnelli meets ‘The Exorcist,” jokes Wedren.
In all, Mitchell supplied them with six totally different takes of the tune. Says Waronker, “We had a variation of our favourite moments to take for the ultimate model. I believed, ‘That is my job at the moment, chopping John’s unbelievable vocals collectively.’”
Watch “Sit Proper Down” under.
